Valerie Zink, a Canadian photojournalist, has announced her resignation from Reuters, ending an eight-year affiliation with the international news agency, saying she could no longer work for an agency that has been "justifying and enabling" the systemic killings of journalists by the Israeli forces.
In a statement posted on her Facebook profile with a photo of her snapped Reuters press ID in half, Zink called out the complicity of Western media in Israel's ongoing attacks on Palestinian journalists.
Highlighting her works with New York Times, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets, she said "At this point it's become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza. I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much."
Citing the Reuters' response to the incident of Anas al-Sharif, the Al Jazeera correspondent who was killed with his crew in Gaza City on 10 August, she said that media outlets like Reuters decided to publish Israel's claim without any proof that Anas al-Sharif was affiliated with Hamas, dutifully repeating and dignifying the accusations.
She criticised Western media outlets citing investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill's remarks that from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from AP to Reuters, every major media outlet has served as a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda, sanitising war crimes and dehumanising victims, abandoning their colleagues and their alleged commitment to true and ethical reporting.
"By repeating Israel's genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility – willfully abandoning the most basic responsibility of journalism – Western media outlets have made possible the killing of more journalists in two years on one tiny strip of land than in WWI, WWII, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Ukraine combined," Zink added.
Earlier on Monday, at least 21 people, including medics and journalists, were killed when Israel struck Palestine's Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.
Among the dead were Al Jazeera's Mohammad Salama, Reuter's cameraman Hussam al-Masri, AP freelancer Mariam Abu Daqqa, Ahmed Abu Aziz and Moaz Abu Taha.
Following the incident, UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, in her verified X profile, urged the international community to take urgent measures in response to the ongoing crisis in Gaza.
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