[Newsstand] Covering an apartheid state committing genocide

I will start with the fundamental facts in the year 2026: Israel is an apartheid state. It is committing genocide in Palestine. And it has killed over 200 journalists in Gaza.

That horrifying sum is higher, according to the Costs of War Project in Brown University, than the total number of journalists killed in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the other wars in Indochina, the wars in the former Yugoslavia, and the US war in Afghanistan…combined. (Here’s a link to a summary and to the full paper.)

Let me add one more fact: International public opinion about Israel has turned markedly negative, likely because many now perceive it as an apartheid regime, running a relentless campaign of genocide in the Gaza Strip (and encouraging settler violence in the West Bank). The 2026 Pew Research Center survey found that, even in the Philippines, 64% of the population held unfavorable views of Israel.

In the controversy over the press visit organized in August by the Israeli government for Filipino journalists, this is my starting point. These are my premises. The press visit is a deliberate and disciplined attempt, by a determined and extremely capable government, to counter the negative perceptions about the state it represents. Negative but accurate, because Israel does run an institutionalized system of segregation and discrimination against Palestinians in occupied territory and even in Israel itself, and because Israel does continue to wage an organized and ruthless campaign (visible through the partial but still graphic view seen on media and on social media) to destroy Palestine and its people in Gaza.

Negative, accurate — and for many, including myself, belated. (I used to be such a fervent supporter of “the only democracy in the Middle East.”)

Under these atrocious conditions, why would a journalist accept an invitation from the genocidal apartheid regime to, in the words of the Israeli embassy’s Facebook post, “experience Israel beyond the headlines, through meaningful conversations, cultural exchanges, and firsthand encounters”?

On the ground

The post is written in the key of normalcy; it’s just another country inviting foreign journalists to see life as it is really lived back home. And, to be completely fair, many on social media read and received it that way. After all, wouldn’t it be better if Filipino journalists actually have on-the-ground experience in Israel? Shouldn’t Israel be allowed, like other countries, to make its case before the world? And doesn’t the real test of journalistic independence from Israeli government control come later, when the stories run?

The press visit has stirred a controversy, and not only among journalists. Among my colleagues in the profession, the issue has become especially contentious. To be sure, there is an imbalance in the forces; organizations such as the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines have issued statements condemning the press visit; no institution related to journalism has issued a defense.

But there is also this: some members of the institutions that criticized the visit expressed some uncertainty in private about whether the lines were in fact that clear-cut, or whether other, previous press visits would be able to meet today’s severe test. Still others have noted, or mocked, the moralistic tone of much of the criticism.

I believe it is still possible to engage in a good-faith discussion of the issue. When I invited Palawan News editor in chief Dempto Anda, a former colleague from the Inquirer for whom I have great respect and one of the 19 journalists who went on the press visit, to discuss the controversy on the Media Nation on Air program on Radyo Katipunan, I told him at the outset (because I wanted to be upfront) that I thought he was wrong to go, but assured him that I and my other co-hosts were committed to an open and fair conversation.

What are the possible reasons for accepting the Israeli government’s invitation? I can discern at least four arguments that justify the press visit.

“It’s called public diplomacy. Everyone does it.” 

Press visits are a fact of life. States, corporations, foundations all do it — even today, even given the highly fragmented media landscape, even with trust ratings for the news media brought deliberately low by targeted criticism and politically sponsored demonization. Original, independent reporting still carries real weight. Even rebel movements adjust to it. “When you’re allowed entry sa isang NPA camp, hindi ba curated experience din ’yun?,” someone with decades of experience in journalism asks. Another veteran journalist says: “Every so often we are in similar situations. Common ang sponsored trips, sponsored this, sponsored that. Making an ethical decision in one does not make you ethical for life.”

“Others have committed war crimes and genocide too.”

This is the line of argument of friends like lawyer (and former journalist) Romel Regalado Bagares, who asks: “How about journalists doing US-sponsored fellowships (if we follow the argument that the US is the world’s biggest sponsor of war crimes and genocides)?” Replying to Bagares, acclaimed documentary filmmaker Howie Severino offers a nuanced take that I believe is still sympathetic to Bagares’ view. “I was a Chevening scholar in the UK, all expenses paid by the British government, which colonized much of the world and even occupied parts of the Philippines for over a year. It didn’t come with a condition to be nice to them in my future coverage. But did my deeper understanding of their culture and history make me more sympathetic?”

“You’re being given access to a place that’s hard to go to.” 

This third argument, best expressed on Facebook by Straits Times editor (and former Inquirer colleague) Raul Dancel, can be summed up in one word: access. “The way I see it, you are being offered access to a place that is normally shut to someone like you, and, any journalist worth his/her/their salt knows that access is one of the currencies of journalism: It is what gets you your story.” Then he adds: “What you do with your access is another matter entirely.”

“Judge us by our stories.” 

This approach, if I understand Anda correctly, is his main argument. He replies to criticism from Inday Espina Varona, another colleague and for many a spirit guide in journalism, first by acknowledging that her questions are fair (“You’re not wrong to ask”) and then, referring to the principle that genuine press freedom requires working without fear or censorship, offers a pledge: “I think it’s the standard we should be judged against when the pieces come out.”

This is an argument that Bagares and Dancel also support. “That’s the point about this vilification of journalists joining a ‘ junket.’ Wala pa reportage eh,” Bagares says. “The proof is in the story you write, not in your attendance,” Dancel says. “Complicity is a choice.”

Bagares provided a photo collage of books written by “people who took ‘junkets’ and made the most of them” — to reinforce the point. But, as I argued in my reply to his post, he was stretching the meaning of the word “junket” to its breaking point. The writers he pointed to may have enjoyed a government-funded freebie or two (riding a US Army helicopter in Vietnam, stowing away on an American hospital ship on D-Day), but to argue that Martha Gellhorn or Philip Knightley or Jonathan Schell benefited from a curated experience “beyond the headlines” that is convenient by design (scheduled meetings, special transportation arrangements, sponsored meals, etc) is to misrepresent their work.

Fact of life

In general terms, I agree with the four arguments. Press visits are a fact of newsroom life. These may be the only way chronically underfunded newsrooms can send their journalists to do overseas reporting. As long as no constraints are placed on the stories themselves, it’s a practice that can be tolerated or (as I did when I was editor in chief of Inquirer.net) even encouraged.

And journalists who join press visits should be evaluated by the stories they file too. Sometimes a sympathetic view cannot be avoided, but even then a story or an analysis can still manage to be original, complex rather than simplistic, bound to truth rather than propaganda. Access is a currency, and the opportunity to get close to or even to get into a conflict zone is compelling for many reasons. And it is true that many of the governments that sponsor press visits have or have had blood on their hands; indeed, for some of them, that they are in a position to sponsor these visits is directly linked to the violence they had earlier inflicted on other places.

But these four arguments rely on two shared assumptions that we should seriously and severely question. 

The first assumption, on which the first two arguments depend, is the notion that there’s no real difference between the Israel committing genocide now and, say, the British at the turn of the 20th century who imprisoned the Boers in concentration camps and caused the deaths of tens of thousands. Or between going on the Israeli press visit this month and, say, accepting an International Visitor Leadership Program nomination from the US Department of State today. If there is a difference, it is only one of degree. 

I think, however, that in fact the difference is one of kind. Israel is committing genocide right this minute, even during a so-called ceasefire. And despite the targeted killings of mainly Palestinian journalists, the partial evidence available on media and social media is vivid, detailed, and unequivocal. This is the first genocide broadcast live around the world; there has been nothing like it in history. And it is precisely because of its impact on international public opinion that press visits like the one conducted this month have been organized. “Experience Israel beyond the headlines” eventually leads to “let’s talk about anything, except headline news about apartheid and genocide.”

Again, the destruction of Palestine is ongoing. Did the Dutch colonial government, to give only one example, organize press tours during the Indonesian war of independence, when Dutch troops massacred thousands? But here we have the Israeli government doing exactly that while the killings are going on. What, not even a temporary cessation for the benefit of visiting observers?

A comparison between “Reported Impact Snapshots” prepared by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs for August 5 and for August 12, roughly the same time as the press visit, shows that seven Palestinians were reported killed and 28 recorded as sustaining injuries in that week alone. The total number of killed, as of August 12, stands at 73,388. (Also, the OCHA count for the number of journalists killed is 262.)

The second shared assumption, on which the last two arguments rely, is the idea that — despite the best efforts of a highly capable government to wring propaganda value out of a press visit — the individual journalist will still find a way to find, write, and publish stories or analyses that criticize the Israeli policy on apartheid, the Israeli case for genocide. I mean, that must be what “judge us by our stories” mean, right, in this particular context? 

But now an unwelcome calculus: How many such critical stories should we expect from the 19 journalists who went to Israel? At least one per journalist? Or just one for the entire delegation? This may seem like nitpicking, but as even Dancel says, the visit “seems like an exercise in sly propaganda.” How many critical stories are needed, then, to justify taking on the reputational risk? What if someone were a lifestyle journalist; would we expect him to write on the extermination of a people? And if one such story does raise the supposed debate over how to describe what is happening in Gaza — a debate favorable to the Israeli government — should it also mention that International Court of Justice judges, United Nations experts, genocide scholars, and even Israeli human rights groups have called the tragedy in Gaza a genocide?

And what can the delegates do, when the Israeli government uses them — not their stories, but the fact of their participation in a seemingly normal press visit, their mere attendance — to drive home the message of normalcy? Complicity is a choice, yes, but the choosing begins well before the stories are even written. – Rappler.com

Veteran journalist John Nery is a Rappler columnist. He anchors Rappler’s special coverage of the Duterte impeachment trial and, every Wednesday, hosts In the Public Square with John Nery. Full disclosure: He has taken part in government-sponsored press visits, including China in 2008, Singapore in 2013, and France in 2015, 2016, and 2018. Many of the stories and all of the columns that came out of these visits are on his Newsstand blog.