Mohammed Balousha described being shot near his home and struggling for help. He was hit a day after Al Jazeera’s Samer Abu Daqqa was killed in a drone strike.
I can’t find a good source for how many journalists work in Palestine, but in other countries, it is about 0.1% of the population (I couldn’t imagine it would be higher in Gaza given the oppressive conditions).
That means there are probably about 5,428 journalists working in Palestine (based of 0.1% of 5,428,542, the best figure for Palestine’s population). 64 have been killed since October 7th, or ~1.2% of all Palestine’s journalists (under the estimate based off worldwide journalism figures). Of Palestine’s population, 19,968 have been killed since October 7th, or ~0.37% of the population.
Doing a two-sample Z-test for proportions on those proportions gives a Z-score of 25.43, which has a P-value of << 0.001 - in other words, if the probability of journalists being killed was the same as for the general Palestinian population, it is vanishingly unlikely we would see a difference in probabilities of being killed this extreme. This is very strong statistically significant evidence that journalists are more likely to have been killed in Palestine than members of the general Palestinian population.
The question then is why are journalists more likely to be killed? There could be an argument made that journalism is inherently a more risky occupation. However, the vast majority of journalists seem to have been killed at their home, not while filming military action or anything like that. There is a theoretical possibility journalists have stayed closer to the action and are less likely to have evacuated to another corner of Gaza since their job requires them to stay closer to the action. However, the other, probably more likely and much more disturbing possibility is that the Likud (Netanyahu) controlled IDF is intentionally targeting journalists (which is a serious war crime).
Good point but looks like those population numbers are for Gaza and the West Bank, which together comprise Palestine. Gaza’s population is 2.2 M, so the picture you painted is actually much worse in reality.
If I had separated out numbers, focusing on the Gaza subset would probably tell a similar story; it might remove some noise that could have masked a significant difference in proportions if the difference was more marginal. However, including the whole of Palestine the proportion difference was still extremely highly significant - there can be no doubt from the numbers that journalists in Palestine are more likely to be killed than any random citizen.
I can’t find a good source for how many journalists work in Palestine, but in other countries, it is about 0.1% of the population (I couldn’t imagine it would be higher in Gaza given the oppressive conditions).
That means there are probably about 5,428 journalists working in Palestine (based of 0.1% of 5,428,542, the best figure for Palestine’s population). 64 have been killed since October 7th, or ~1.2% of all Palestine’s journalists (under the estimate based off worldwide journalism figures). Of Palestine’s population, 19,968 have been killed since October 7th, or ~0.37% of the population.
Doing a two-sample Z-test for proportions on those proportions gives a Z-score of 25.43, which has a P-value of << 0.001 - in other words, if the probability of journalists being killed was the same as for the general Palestinian population, it is vanishingly unlikely we would see a difference in probabilities of being killed this extreme. This is very strong statistically significant evidence that journalists are more likely to have been killed in Palestine than members of the general Palestinian population.
The question then is why are journalists more likely to be killed? There could be an argument made that journalism is inherently a more risky occupation. However, the vast majority of journalists seem to have been killed at their home, not while filming military action or anything like that. There is a theoretical possibility journalists have stayed closer to the action and are less likely to have evacuated to another corner of Gaza since their job requires them to stay closer to the action. However, the other, probably more likely and much more disturbing possibility is that the Likud (Netanyahu) controlled IDF is intentionally targeting journalists (which is a serious war crime).
Good point but looks like those population numbers are for Gaza and the West Bank, which together comprise Palestine. Gaza’s population is 2.2 M, so the picture you painted is actually much worse in reality.
I think all the numbers are for all of Palestine - the population, the number of journalist fatalities, and the number of total deaths (most would be in Gaza, but the IDF is apparently also continuing activities in the West Bank which are killing Palestinians and included in the total - see for example https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/11/alarming-urgent-situation-occupied-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem).
If I had separated out numbers, focusing on the Gaza subset would probably tell a similar story; it might remove some noise that could have masked a significant difference in proportions if the difference was more marginal. However, including the whole of Palestine the proportion difference was still extremely highly significant - there can be no doubt from the numbers that journalists in Palestine are more likely to be killed than any random citizen.