UN Special Rapporteur | Albanese presents report on “mediacide” in the Gaza war

The press is also dying in the Gaza war. There are studies and a book on this, and now also a report from the United Nations. Photo: dpa/Abed Rahim Khatib When the war began in October 2023, Israel also closed the Gaza Strip to foreign journalists. The army has also killed many Palestinian media workers. A recent study by the Free University of Berlin and Reporters Without Borders showed how limited reporting is in Germany. The book “State Reason Radio: German Media and the Genocide in Gaza” by Fabian Goldmann also precisely highlights this censorship and self-censorship.

Two weeks ago, Francesca Albanese also presented a report entitled "Truth among the rubble: media in the time of genocide" and came to the same conclusions. Albanese is the UN special rapporteur on the human rights situation in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. She too was unable to enter the areas and relies on 89 submissions. Her report, dated July 2026, is addressed to the UN General Assembly, where she presented it on Monday. She introduced him at a press conference on Tuesday.

Albanese has counted almost 300 Palestinian journalists killed and around 710 relatives killed since October 2023. This puts their numbers above those of Reporters Without Borders (220) and the Committee to Protect Journalists (247). The Israeli army is said to have carried out around 70 targeted killings of media workers in Gaza, according to Albanese in retaliation for their journalistic work. She relies on the two media organizations for this number. Even after the ceasefire of October 2025, which Israel regularly violated, there were killings of media workers.

The Italian-born UN special rapporteur sees the attacks as war crimes and crimes against humanity. She also sees the systematic killing of media workers as evidence of genocidal intent. She uses the term “mediacide” to describe the systematic destruction of the public function of the media.

According to Albanese, over 100 Palestinian journalists have been arrested, around 30 are still in custody and two are believed to have disappeared. The Israeli army also destroyed 150 media offices and institutions and 81 percent of the entire information and communications infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. Hamas and the Palestinian Authority also restrict journalism or threaten media workers, the report said.

Israel has been criticized for controlling domestic and foreign reporting through censorship, access restrictions and digital campaigns. For 2024, Albanese names 1,635 news stories blocked by military authorities in the country and 6,265 redacted. Albanese criticizes many statements in the Israeli media as dehumanizing language and hate speech, in individual cases also by political representatives, as public incitement to genocide.

The report also covers Western media. They give preference to Israeli representations, hardly allow Palestinian voices to be heard and inadequately identify Israeli responsibility for those killed. Albanese describes the practice of labeling journalists as “terrorists,” for which the Israeli army has its own unit, the “Legitimization Cell.”

As if to confirm their criticism, the “Welt” reported on Albanese’s presentation in the General Assembly on Tuesday. The newspaper accuses two of the journalists mentioned in the report of being “Hamas terrorists.” According to her own statements, she received the alleged evidence from a “high-ranking representative” of the Israeli army. The author also does not allow Palestinians to have their say - but Israel's Foreign Ministry calls on Albanese to resign. At the beginning of 2025, an editor at “Taz” had already sparked a controversy about such one-sided reporting among leftists with an article “If journalists can also be terrorists”; In the meantime he has switched to “Welt”.

Albanese also cites the “Tagesschau” and the “Bild” as examples of how the media have taken on allegations of terrorism against killed journalists without checking them. For Germany, the report otherwise names the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF. Similar to Goldmann, Albanese comes to the conclusion that the ARD presents civilian victims in a handout primarily as a result of the alleged use of human shields by Hamas. This means that Israel's responsibility for 72,000 deaths, more than a quarter of which are children and young people, is being concealed.

Regarding ZDF, Albanese refers to an analysis that found that 90.7 percent of the uses of the word “barbaric” referred to violence against Israeli victims, while the term was not used to describe attacks on Palestinians. The German journalist Tarek Baé had previously reported on this.

For her report, Albanese also examined social networks, including Meta, X, Alphabet and Tiktok. On Facebook and Instagram alone, around 38.8 million posts related to Palestine are said to have been removed, blocked or suppressed since the end of 2023. Albanese cites the US website Dropsite News as the source, which had evaluated a leak. At X, the algorithm reduced interactions with major Palestinian news sites by 77 percent. Israeli deletion requests were very often followed by the platforms; the report states 99.2 percent for Tiktok and 94 percent for Meta. Hate speech against Palestinians, on the other hand, often remained online. Albanese also accuses the platforms of disseminating Israeli government advertising and making money from it.

Albanese is calling on Israel to end the attacks, release imprisoned journalists and allow foreign media access to Gaza. Albanese recommends that her client, the United Nations, secure evidence of crimes against Palestinian media workers and communication structures. An independent monitoring mechanism should be set up for this purpose. States should investigate the attacks identified and cooperate with the International Criminal Court.

The report requires media and internet platforms to examine one-sided claims before publishing them, to allow Palestinians to have their say, and to make visible corrections when other facts emerge.

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