When the press isn’t protected, what do we stand to lose?
- kirranicolle
- 13 minutes ago
- 3 min read
As World Press Freedom Day is being marked this weekend, Salvos Online journalist KIRRALEE NICOLLE writes that without truth-telling, we have no way of knowing what is real, who to trust, or even what we should be doing.
One hundred and seventy-six. That’s a conservative estimate of just how many journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza while covering Israel’s bombardment of Palestine since the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.
These numbers from the Committee to Protect Journalists are from a preliminary investigation as of 25 April 2025, and for the true toll, we will be forced to wait and see what time uncovers. Already, this conflict is the deadliest for journalists in the 21st Century.
But of course, it isn’t only Israel. Russia recently returned to Ukraine the heavily tortured body of journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna, who was detained, imprisoned and died after covering Russia’s occupation of Ukraine. There are dozens more examples of this kind of tragedy.
With World Press Freedom Day marked yesterday, it’s an eerie reminder of what should not be, and what happens to those who try to tell the truth.
We don’t have to look far in the world to understand what happens to truth. Thanks to postmodern, post-truth spin, artificial intelligence and a free market skewed towards building economies at the cost of humans, animals and the planet, the anchor of truth doesn’t take hold easily. And when it does, the expense is often lives.
Egyptian-American journalist Omar El Akkad has written a chilling reflection on the state of play in Palestine and its conception by the rest of the world in his book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This.
“One day the killing will be over, either because the oppressed will have their liberation or because there will be so few left to kill,” Omar writes. “We will be expected to forget any of it ever happened, to acknowledge it if need be but only in harmless, perfunctory ways. Many of us will, if only as a kind of psychological self-defense. So much lives and dies by the grace of endless forgetting.”
As a journalist in an age of AI and ‘alternative facts’, I’ve had to come to terms with what my work requires of me, and how far my responsibility extends in making sure my words aren’t twisted. Once something is published, it can be endlessly repackaged, and one doesn’t necessarily have control over who takes it as their own or uses it to their own ends.
Now, I don’t mean to place journalists in a special category. Anyone who communicates in a public manner deals with the same concerns. When it comes to risk in war zones, it appears that currently, being any kind of civilian affords one no protection. Babies, young children and women are being killed every day in battles across the world.
But without a free press, we lack recourse when things fall apart. When there is exploitation, murder, greed and inconsistency, we need someone trained in how to pry. But without those prying being protected, the questions cease.
Without truth-telling, we have no way of knowing what is real, who to trust, or even what we should be doing. Disinformation is a particularly cruel tactic of dictatorships – it turns family members and friends against one another to further political aims. It is greedy, manipulative, cunning and dark.
Suppressing truth is the antithesis of the gospel message. Of course, there may be times when we are careful about what we say, but this should never be to protect aims that do not further the work of loving God and neighbour, of protecting those on the margins and of loving with integrity.
Ephesians 4:25 says, “Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to your neighbour, for we are all members of one body.”
Sometimes, given the state of evangelical Christianity these days, I wonder why we are so willing to overlook some things and choose to fixate on others. Whether we have forgotten that we are all members of one body – one body placed in the world to nurture it, to love and to sustain peace. We should be people of truth, united by the ultimate Truth-Teller: Jesus.
Journalists don’t deserve a pedestal, but they do deserve protection. As people of truth, we ought to defend the work of truth-telling. It’s at the heart of our faith, and it's key to sustaining our integrity.
