On Saturday 4 May – the day after “World Press Freedom Day” – Bristol Palestine Alliance (BPA) will be organising the thirteenth mass protest march in Bristol. This one will be calling out the corporate media – including the BBC – over its complicity and enabling of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Bristol: holding the corporate media to account
BPA intends to highlight the media bias against accurate reporting of the war crimes being committed in Gaza by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Western media tends to repeat, almost verbatim, the accounts by the IOF, justifying their atrocities in Gaza.
Shockingly, brave journalists – who report eye-witness accounts of the daily brutal assaults on civilians by the IOF – are then deliberately targeted and murdered by the IOF to discourage and deny independent accounts of war crimes ..
According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), since October, at least 97 journalists and media workers were confirmed killed by the IOF.
16 journalists were reported injured.
Four journalists were reported missing.
25 journalists were reported arrested.
CPJ also records that there have been multiple assaults, threats, and cyberattacks against, and censorship of, journalists. The CPJ also reports killings of family members of journalists. The Bristol Palestine Alliance march this Saturday 4 May will remember the enormous death toll among journalists and media workers in Gaza.
The march will be led by people wearing mock blue “PRESS” flak jackets and will be holding cards with the names of the 97 Palestinian Journalists and media workers killed in Gaza.
The march, which will be predominantly silent, will be accompanied by a solemn drum beat.
On arrival at College Green, the blue flak jackets together with the cards with the names of murdered journalists will be ceremonially pinned to a blank banner in front of the speaker’s podium.
The route of the march
People will gather at 12pm at the new meeting point, the Water Tower, Clifton Downs, BS9 1FG.
The route will head down Whiteladies Rd and end at College Green BS1 5UA for a rally with guest speakers.
As the route heads down along Whiteladies Road, it will take us past AXA Insurance offices. Palestinians call on the world to boycott AXA Insurance as it funds illegal Israeli settlements and arms manufacturing.
The route will also take us past BBC Bristol where we will take the opportunity to highlight the danger that Palestinian journalists face reporting Israel’s ongoing genocide in their country. We will also charge BBC News with complicity in enabling Israel’s genocide. We will call on them to give equal weight and humanity to Palestinian suffering in their news coverage.
Special guest speakers include:
- Jonathan Cook – Award-winning journalist, Middle East Eye.
- Johyna Ballout – Palestinian and campaigner with Gazan family.
- Mike Jempson – International journalist.
- Sage – representative from the student occupation at the University of Bristol.
- Farooq Siddique – columnist and community activist.
- Richard Medhurst – a special recorded message from the renowned journalist.
Featured image via BPA
