According to multiple media accounts, young Yusra al-Azami, an engaged student from Gaza, was executed several days ago in an "honor killing," and her fiancé and future-brother-in-law were brutally beaten by members of Hamas' "vice and virtue" unit. Ha'aretz, often considered Israel's "leading daily," passed the "honor killing" off as a robbery.
Jerusalem Post correspondent Khaled Abu Toameh has chronicled the difficult circumstances journalists face in the Palestinian-run territories. Recently he reported that the Arafat-affiliated Palestinian Journalists Syndicate (PJS) warned Palestinian journalists to stop covering street marches by gunmen in Gaza and clashes between rival groups.
CNN executive Eason Jordan's dramatic acknowledgment in a New York Times op-ed ("The News We Kept to Ourselves," April 11, 2003) that for more than a decade his network concealed gruesome information about Saddam Hussein's regime lifts the rock a notch off the dark underside of media collaboration with barbarous dictators.
Coverage of the story of Rachel Corrie, the American college student and Palestinian advocate killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza while attempting to block a house demolition, followed predictable trends.
In a surprisingly candid op-ed (“The News We Kept to Ourselves”) in the April 11, 2003 edition of the New York Times, CNN's chief news executive, Eason Jordan, reveals that due to the real threat of torture and death to his staff and sources, CNN has for years been sanitizing its reporting from Iraq, rarely exposing the severely brutal nature of the Iraqi regime.