Gaza continues to be the deadliest place on Earth for journalists despite repeated Israeli claims of ceasefires and humanitarian pauses, with new figures from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) revealing a historic and unprecedented assault on the media that press freedom organizations now say amounts to a deliberate campaign to silence witnesses to the destruction of Gaza.
According to CPJ’s latest global data, 129 journalists and media workers were killed worldwide in 2025 alone, the highest annual total since the organization began keeping records in 1992. Israeli military operations accounted for roughly two-thirds of those deaths, with Palestinian journalists in Gaza making up the overwhelming majority of victims.
But the longer-term numbers are even more staggering.
As of spring 2026, various press freedom organizations estimate that between 250 and nearly 300 journalists and media workers have been killed since Israel launched its assault on Gaza following the October 7 attacks in 2023. CPJ-linked investigations cited by international media estimate Israel has killed at least 259 media workers since the war began, including more than 210 Palestinian journalists inside Gaza itself.
Spanish newspaper El País recently reported that Israeli operations across Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen and Iran had killed approximately 260 journalists and media workers by April 2026, describing the past two years as the deadliest period for journalism since modern records began.
The figures dwarf journalist casualties in every other modern conflict, including Iraq, Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan combined over comparable periods. Researchers from Brown University’s Costs of War Project have described Gaza as the deadliest conflict for journalists in recorded history.
The continuing deaths are especially controversial because much of 2025 and 2026 has officially been framed internationally as a period of ceasefires, de-escalation agreements and humanitarian arrangements brokered by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
Yet Israeli attacks on Gaza never truly stopped.
Reuters reported this month that more than 830 Palestinians have already been killed since the October 2025 ceasefire officially took effect, with Israeli airstrikes and artillery attacks continuing almost daily across the enclave.
Le Monde reported this week that more than 800 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire announcement, while Israel continues occupying large parts of Gaza and expanding military-controlled buffer zones deeper into Palestinian territory.
For journalists inside Gaza, the supposed ceasefire brought no meaningful protection.
“There is no truly safe place,” Gaza journalist Seham Tantesh recently told The Guardian. “Strikes can happen anywhere, at any moment.”
CPJ has accused Israel of carrying out “the deadliest and most deliberate effort to kill and silence journalists” the organization has ever documented.
Its February 2026 report concluded that the Israel Defense Forces had conducted “more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military” since CPJ began monitoring attacks on the press more than three decades ago.
The organization documented at least 64 cases in which journalists appeared to have been directly targeted and killed in apparent retaliation for their reporting work.
CPJ regional director Sara Qudah said the situation represented “a direct, unprecedented assault on press freedom.”
The deaths have been accompanied by widespread destruction of media infrastructure across Gaza. CPJ says Israel has systematically destroyed press offices, communications facilities and broadcasting centers while also detaining Palestinian journalists in both Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
International press freedom groups argue that the ongoing Israeli ban on unrestricted foreign media access to Gaza has become central to the crisis.
Since the war began, Israel has largely prevented independent international journalists from freely entering Gaza outside tightly controlled military embeds. As a result, the world’s understanding of conditions inside the territory has depended almost entirely on Palestinian journalists working under bombardment while simultaneously trying to survive it themselves.
Critics argue the restrictions have created an information blackout around what numerous human rights organizations and United Nations experts increasingly describe as genocide.
Le Monde reported this week that Gaza remains inaccessible to most international journalists and NGOs, deepening what it described as an “information vacuum” surrounding conditions inside the territory.
Press freedom advocates say the ban on foreign reporting has allowed Israel to control narratives surrounding military operations while local Palestinian reporters are systematically killed.
“Since October 7, 2023, Palestinian journalists have been slaughtered with impunity while the world watches,” Sara Qudah said in comments cited by media freedom groups.
Major international media organizations including Reuters, AFP, the Associated Press, CNN and the BBC have repeatedly demanded unrestricted foreign press access to Gaza, warning that Palestinian journalists “should not have to shoulder this burden alone.”
Meanwhile, Israel continues denying deliberately targeting journalists.
The IDF has repeatedly stated that it “does not intentionally harm journalists” and claims it only targets militants operating in combat zones. Israeli officials have also accused some Palestinian journalists of links to Hamas, although press freedom organizations say Israel has failed to provide credible evidence in many cases.
But critics increasingly argue that the scale of the killings, combined with Israel’s restrictions on international media access, has destroyed the credibility of claims that journalists are being accidentally harmed.
“With such technology, there is no plausible deniability about who is being targeted,” CPJ’s Sara Qudah said regarding Israel’s advanced surveillance and targeting systems.
The issue is becoming central to wider allegations that Israel is operating beyond the constraints of international law while facing little meaningful accountability from Western governments.
Under Article 79 of the Geneva Conventions’ Additional Protocol I, journalists in war zones are protected civilians and cannot legally be targeted for carrying out reporting work. Yet press freedom groups say Gaza has effectively become a battlefield where cameras and press vests now function as targets rather than protection.
The result is a historic collapse in protections for war reporting.
Every image emerging from Gaza now carries extraordinary risk. Every surviving journalist represents another witness to a war that much of the outside world still cannot freely observe for itself.
And despite the language of ceasefires and diplomacy, Gaza remains the most dangerous place on Earth to report the truth.
