Israel should let reporters into Gaza

SOME of the greatest journalism ever written has come from reporters who can get right to the heart of the action. History-defining reports - which in some cases served to change the course of history - are now often seen as great literature, rather than simply journalism. Many came from seeing, first hand, terrible and shocking events and getting them down, on paper and on film.

- Philip Bowern on Wednesday

‘Think George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, reporting from the Spanish Civil War; Martha Gelhorn and Ernest Hemingway's work in World War Two; or more recent journalism and books by novelists and reporters like Michael Herr, who wrote the seminal Dispatches from his experiences as a reporter in Vietnam.

Earlier this month, we marked the 40th anniversary of the Live Aid concert. That was prompted, of course, by Michael Buerk’s uncompromising BBC news reports from Ethiopia during the famine - which inspired Bob Geldof to launch the Band Aid single and the concert that followed.

I am more of a consumer than a reporter of news these days - and I never went to a real war zone ~ but when journalists are denied access to the places where major events are unfolding it is bound to have a negative impact on the quality of the journalism and the confidence we all have in its veracity.

‘There is certainly no shortage of film footage from Gaza at the moment and I see, like everyone else, the shocking pictures of clearly distressed Palestinians desperate for food, of the dead and injured following military action by the Israel Defence Forces and the anger and desperation of a civilian population under fire for many, many months, their communities destroyed.

I don't doubt it paints a true picture of appalling suffering, but each British news report is prefaced by an admission that, because Israel will not allow Western journalists and news crews into Gaza, its reporting takes place from areas away from the centre of the conflict.