We, the students at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at NYU, recognize the recent developments in the Palestinian territories and Israel have caused an unprecedented loss of life and a military operation that continues to threaten the safety and survival of more than 2 million people in Gaza. The tragedies unfolding before us also lay bare critical contradictions within our media industry and raise urgent questions about the response, or lack thereof, of certain journalism institutions, including our own. In this moment of reckoning for global journalism, both as a profession and practice, we are concerned that the department training us to enter and excel in this field has not addressed these developments in any substantial way.

The past 30 days have seen the deadliest militant attack in Israeli history, a burgeoning genocide in the blockaded Palestinian territory of Gaza, an escalation of the ethnic cleansing of the occupied Palestinian territories of the West Bank, and the largest anti-war demonstrations worldwide since the Iraq war. During this time, Israeli airstrikes have killed at least one Lebanese and 32 Palestinian journalists, and Hamas militants have killed four Israeli journalists. We are also witnessing the deliberate targeting of journalists and their families by the Israeli military in open violation of international law. The Committee to Protect Journalists has recently declared this “the deadliest period for journalists covering conflict since CPJ began tracking in 1992.” 

While the current crisis threatens millions of Palestinian lives, we recognize that the United States is politically and financially implicated in these events, and U.S.-affiliated media outlets play a significant role in this political landscape. As such, this is a pivotal moment for the future of our profession; how we respond today will have direct consequences on the levels of integrity we can salvage in the eyes of the public.

I.

Our first, central, and most pressing demand is that the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute meaningfully acknowledges that at least 33 journalists have been killed over the past 30 days, and dozens more and their families are currently targets of extermination by the Israel Defense Forces. We understand that this is not usual, but neither are the circumstances. We believe that letting this unprecedented death toll pass without statement normalizes the death of journalists, particularly Black and brown journalists of the Global South. We are concerned that we are being trained to join a field where the mass death of our colleagues is not a primary concern. 

We also consider this crisis an opportunity to open dialogue on the safety of journalists worldwide, particularly those who are regarded as “fixers” in their homelands, and how this field has historically disregarded and undermined their contributions to global journalism in favor of Western journalists whose work would be impossible without theirs. This field can and must adapt to serve their needs and guarantee their safety. As students of journalism, including global journalism, we feel that our department should recognize this crisis and give its students the space to grieve and express their thoughts freely.

II.

Secondly, we have concerns about the integrity of our field regarding the practice of our profession in and of itself. As students at the Arthur L. Carter Institute of Journalism, we have been taught that our primary duty lies in the pursuit of truth and that we are, at all times, bound by a sacred commitment to ethical and public-interest reporting. We have learned in our classrooms both the value of deeply investigated and fact-checked information and the dangers that misinformation and disinformation begets, especially if disseminated on an institutional level. 

Instead, the Director of the New York Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the U.N. has stated that “Western corporate media, increasingly captured and state-adjacent, are in open breach of Article 20 of the ICCPR, continuously dehumanizing Palestinians to facilitate the genocide, and broadcasting propaganda for war and advocacy of national, racial or religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility and violence. U.S.-based social media companies are suppressing the voices of human rights defenders while amplifying pro-Israel propaganda.” We are inclined to agree.

We would like to bring to your attention some gross violations of the principles of journalism we have been taught being carried out by the media, particularly in the U.S.:

• All foreign journalists, including Americans, are being denied access to Gaza by the Israeli blockade, which has led to imbalanced coverage and notably biased reporting that is not sufficiently disclosed.
• The weaponization of journalistic phrasing to display implicit bias, including continuous and significant discrepancies in describing Palestinian and Israeli deaths, as well as frequently and strategically obscuring culpability. Headlines like “Several Family Members of Al Jazeera’s Gaza Bureau Chief Are Killed” show that there is a conscious effort to understate the scale and nature of these violations of human rights and press freedom. These subjective equivocations are particularly critical to unpack considering that they are carried out by prestigious mainstream outlets whose work we study as part of our core courses on reporting and writing.
• The pattern of dehumanizing and racist language uncritically propagated by mainstream media outlets. In the absence of open access for reporting on the ground, mainstream outlets are operating as stenographers for state narratives, producing headlines that function as propaganda and are subsequently amplified by the President of the United States. We recognize the media’s role in misstating the context of the crisis and fixating on particular narratives to manufacture consent for a political position that has led to approximately 10,000 deaths so far in both the Palestinian territories and Israel — with over 8,000 of those being Palestinian deaths.
• The atmosphere of unspoken acceptance of the conditions Palestinian journalists are reporting under, including direct threats to their homes and families. They are, as we speak, under siege with limited food, water, electricity and no ability to seek refuge, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions and principles of press freedom.
• The distinct lack of Palestinian voices and perspectives in American media, the sidelining of Arab, Muslim and Palestinian journalists in American media, including the coincidental removal of three MSNBC Muslim anchors directly after Oct. 7. This extends to Western journalists dismissing and adding numerous caveats to the reliability and professionalism of Gaza reporters on the ground, such as the shocking and inhumane implication that Palestinian journalist Wael al-Dahdouh’s loss of his family to Israeli airstrikes live on-air is a form of Hamas propaganda.
• The documented and tacitly accepted pattern of journalists in the U.S. being fired from their jobs for expressing pro-Palestinian political opinions, and the consistent and McCarthyist pattern of targeting pro-Palestinian voices in political, academic, journalistic, literary and artistic spaces leading to a culture of fear and repression.

With these factors, among many taken into consideration, our second demand is as follows:

The department should address, tangibly, the alarming restrictions on the freedom of the press and freedom of speech. We see that the current onslaught on press freedom is reminiscent of the thought control that “dictatorial regimes” from the Global South practice and that corporate Western media has traditionally not hesitated to criticize. Many of us are students who hail from countries with a background of press censorship, and we recognize the warning signs in American media today. We are expressing concern that we have traded one form of press repression for another and that the complete silence from our department on the most pressing global crisis of recent years is a significant symptom of these fault lines.

This silence is particularly concerning for the undersigned students who belong to countries in the Global South. We witness, on a daily basis, the hypocrisies of Western media, which continues to offer differential treatment to cases of human rights and press violations based on geopolitical interests. We find it contradictory that we are encouraged to follow, emulate and even apply to these media outlets, which have been demonstrating clear journalistic biases that jeopardize people’s access to a life of safety and dignity.

We do not believe our demand is unreasonable given that the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute previously launched the First Amendment Watch project, of which the stated goal is to “increase civic engagement by providing the tools for citizens of all ages to better understand their rights and freedoms” and notes that “attacks on freedoms of speech, press, assembly and petition are on the rise.” It also specifically contains a module on campus speech. Currently, NYU students have been doxxed and defamed both online and in public spaces — on a well-known LED truck — harassed, and fired from jobs for their political positions. The students bearing the brunt of this targeted harassment have been primarily Black and brown students. Additionally, the U.S. senate has passed a resolution to mischaracterize, defame and criminalize student activity deliberately. The Biden administration has since enlisted the Department of Homeland Security to track and surveil student activity on campuses in a political environment that is now highly reminiscent of the post-Sept. 11 period during which the Patriot Act was passed. In these heated and pivotal times, NYU Journalism’s First Amendment Watch’s most recent post, on Oct. 31, 2023, is about a trademark dispute over a Trump t-shirt.

We would also like to bring to your attention NYU Journalism’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiative, which strives to “explore journalism, identity and issues that matter through a BIPOC lens” and asks, “how we as a community can move forward in an inclusive and meaningful way.” The statement affirms the need to “encourage both graduate and undergraduate students to report on the difficult problems facing diverse communities in New York and around the country,” as well as a commitment to exploring anti-bias training “in order to identify and resolve bias in the classroom and other Institute activities.” 

We are currently in the midst of “difficult problems facing diverse communities,” both as NYU students and as journalists. However, NYU Journalism’s apparent determination to ignore the deadliest and most repressive period for journalists and focus on the minutiae of our journalistic studies leaves us unsure that we will even hear from our department or future colleagues, let alone receive support, in the event that we are targeted for our political opinions or reporting. 

In this context, we find it appalling that we have yet to hear from our department. So far, throughout the more than 40 courses being offered in the current semester, there has been little substantial discussion on the subject in an overwhelming majority of classes or departmental programming. This implies that the journalism department is out of touch with global events, or it raises questions on the very principles we are taught in our classrooms and whether they are conditionally applied in cases where it is safe to do so.

We would finally like to note that the department has, in the past, had critical discussions on the journalistic aspects of war and invasions. Various panel discussions and at least one class last year were dedicated to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There were discussions on the diverse contours of conflict reporting and critical evaluations of the reporting done on the topic. We believe that with the fault lines we are clearly witnessing in our media landscape, it is imperative that a similar focus must be allowed on the current crisis in the Palestinian territories and neighboring countries.

III.

We want to stress that this letter is explicitly not a demand for the department or faculty to declare a political stance. Far from it, we welcome the opportunity to open a sincere and objective dialogue in which all parties are fairly represented. This dialogue can take the form of panels, events, seminars or teach-ins where a plurality of opinions can be expressed and critiqued respectfully. We also welcome the opportunity to question why that may not be possible.

In short, this is a demand for NYU’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute to simply talk about the news.

We hope to hear a response from the NYU Journalism Department soon.

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