my birthday is tomorrow. i turn 23, but honestly, the older i get, the less my birthday feels important, and the more the causes i care about matter to me.
today, november 2nd, is international day to end impunity for crimes against journalists. and this one is close to my heart.
i studied journalism for over three years. even though i realized that the job itself might not be the right fit for me right now, i carry so much respect for journalism as a profession. for local reporters who cover community issues that truly affect people’s daily lives. for investigative journalists who hold power accountable. for conflict reporters who risk everything to get the truth out.
journalists should never be targeted for telling the truth. ending impunity means demanding justice for those lives, and protecting the ones still doing the work. journalism matters. journalists matter.
and maybe you’re thinking: “ok but i’m just a hobbyist fiction writer, why should i care about this?”
because independent journalism and democracy are tied together.
without free journalism, democracy falls apart, and without democracy, your stories are less likely to be heard, shared, or even allowed. the freedom to write, whether it’s a news article or a fantasy novel, lives in the same fragile ecosystem. caring about journalists is caring about the survival of storytelling itself.
and i want to take today to raise awareness about the journalists who have been killed in gaza, as well as those around the world who have lost their lives simply for doing their jobs. every time a journalist is silenced, we all lose a voice that was working to inform, to challenge, to document.
gaza is now the deadliest place for journalists in modern history. since october 2023, over 240 journalists have been killed in israeli strikes according to the united nations. most of them were palestinian journalists, targeted even though journalists are specifically protected as civilians under international law. israel has also barred international press from entering gaza, claiming it’s for their safety, really meaning: “we don’t want anyone to document proof of our war crimes.” silencing the press is silencing the truth, and it is a deliberate attack not just on journalism, but on justice itself.
when governments or militaries target journalists, what they’re really targeting is memory. they’re trying to erase the record of what happened, to control the story that survives. but journalism is about refusing that erasure. it’s about saying: we saw, we heard, we witnessed, and the world will know.
and this is why and how i connect it back to writing. because at its core, storytelling is resistance to silence. whether you’re writing a novel, a blog post, or reporting from the ground, you are preserving something that could otherwise be lost. free journalism keeps democracies alive, and democracy keeps all forms of writing alive.
so on this day, i’m thinking about the people who put their lives on the line for truth. i’m grieving the journalists killed in gaza, and everywhere else where reporting the facts has been treated like a crime. and i’m holding onto the belief that words, whether truthful, messy, or imperfect, still matter.
areudirty
romaincrisis
yousharknotpass
ellievsbear
2087
