How Shireen Abu Akleh inspired a generation of female reporters

How Shireen Abu Akleh inspired a generation of female reporters

Younger Palestinian journalists remember how Abu Akleh’s coverage inspired them to follow in her footsteps and shaped the way Palestinians tell their own story.

How Shireen Abu Akleh inspired a generation of female reporters

Almost every Palestinian who lived through the Second Intifada remembers Shireen Abu Akleh’s face. Her reporting, voice and composure in the most difficult of times are familiar to many TV viewers across the Arab world.

The veteran Al Jazeera Arabic journalist, 51, was shot dead by Israeli forces while she was covering a military raid on the Jenin refugee camp on Wednesday. 

She was wearing an easily identifiable press vest, and was next to a colleague who was also targeted and left injured. 

Thousands of people attended her funeral processions in Ramallah and Jerusalem on Thursday and Friday. Her body, wrapped in the Palestinian flag, was carried through the Jenin refugee camp.

For many young Palestinian journalists, she was among the first reporters who were vigorously putting across their perspective on the TV screens. Her rise to prominence came at a time when Al Jazeera Arabic was breaking the dominance of Western international media channels on how the region was reported.

Her sign-off, where she ended her news packages with her name and the city she was reporting from, had become so iconic that many Palestinian women grew up emulating it in front of mirrors. 

And some of those women went on to become journalists themselves, influenced by Shireen’s reporting or inspired by her journalism classes at Birzeit University, near Ramallah.

Shortly after the shooting, the Israeli government circulated a video alleging that Palestinian gunmen could have killed Shireen. That claim has been refuted by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, which analysed the video evidence shortly afterwards. 

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says the targeting of Palestinian journalists in the West Bank and Gaza is “systematic”, and has submitted a formal complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in April 2022. 

Reporters Without Borders says at least 30 journalists have been killed in the Occupied Territories since 2000, and has documented 140 Israeli violations against Palestinian journalists since March 2018, the beginning of the ‘Great march of return’ protests. The tally includes two journalists wearing clearly marked press vests who were killed by live and sniper fire, and a freelance photographer who was shot in both legs and had to undergo partial amputation of his left leg.

In their own words, three young Palestinian journalists describe what it meant for them to have Shireen as a colleague, role model, and teacher. 

Source: TRT World