Gaza ruled – both in terms of who won and those who lost the final battle
Gaza video journalist Yasser Abu Wazna sent a message as he was unable to travel to London to receive the award for his film on four businesses upended by the war. Photo: Rashmee Roshan Lall
To no one’s surprise this year’s Rory Peck Awards were dominated by Gaza.
Not just the winners but those who lost the ultimate battle – for life – while covering the story.
It’s not often that journalists are so tragically and so consistently part of the story they’re trying to cover – two years of war, punishing military operations, displacement, hunger.
But then Gaza’s journalists have to cover their own story. There is no one else to tell it.
Since October 2023, when Israel began to pound Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 Hamas-led attacks, non-Palestinian journalists have not been allowed in. Except for brief visits supervised by the Israeli army. The Economist’s Middle East correspondent went at least a year ago, I think. Ditto a couple of American outlets and more recently, the BBC’s Lucy Williamson.
Not allowing non-Palestinian journalists into Gaza serves two purposes. It’s easier to discredit the account that emerges from the territory on grounds that those who are covering it are too close to the story. And it’s easier to target those who cover that story so they find it more difficult, sometimes impossible, to tell it. More journalists have now died in Gaza than in any other conflict in modern times, as UN special rapporteurs Irene Khan and Francesca Albanese noted in September.
And yet, they persist.
Video journalist Yasser Abu Wazna, for instance, won the News & Features Award for a film that told the story of four businesses upended by the war. There was unmistakable pathos in the before and after footage but Mr Wazna managed it only at great risk – of bombardment. All of this while he was displaced and suffered the frustrations of communications blackouts.
The UN rapporteurs have called for the world to come together and end “the unprecedented impunity enjoyed by Israel”. With nearly 250 journalists thought to have been killed in Gaza from October 7, 2023 to September 2025, they are right to warn that time is of the essence. The world must act without delay, they said, “before Israel shuts down the last voices in Gaza.”
The Rory Peck Awards were a solemn moment to consider the gravity of the situation. They were established 30 years ago in memory of freelance cameraman Rory Peck who died while covering a protest against Boris Yeltsin. Juliet, his late widow, said the awards were meant “to raise the profile of the work of freelance cameramen and their vital contribution to newsgathering”.
In Gaza, we see that in spades.
