In August 2024, Salma al-Qadoumi was documenting families fleeing Hamad City, a residential area in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. She was with a group of journalists, all dressed in press flak jackets and helmets, recording interviews and scenes of displacement.
“Israeli army vehicles suddenly advanced towards us and opened fire on us directly,” said al-Qadoumi, 36, who had been filming news and human-interest stories for several outlets. A bullet fired from an Israeli tank pierced her back and exited near her heart. It was the third time she had been injured in the past three years. Her colleague, photojournalist Ibrahim Muhareb, was killed.
“They call us freelancers, and we carry full responsibility for our lives and for the risks we face in our work,” she said.
For three years, since October 2023, news outlets around the world have relied on the reporting of Palestinian journalists in Gaza, particularly freelancers, who are paid per story, photo, or video. Since they are not employees or full-time correspondents, freelancers are rarely offered any protections or safety net by the newsrooms they have risked their lives to report for.
“No agency takes on the risk for a journalist in Gaza, if they are injured, killed, or their equipment is destroyed,” said al-Qadoumi, who has lost her equipment and been displaced at least 37 times since the beginning of the genocide.
Israel has barred foreign journalists from entering the Gaza Strip since October 2023, apart from brief visits escorted by its army. Palestinian reporters, many of whom are selling their work to international outlets, have been covering the genocide of their own people for the past three years.
The Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, the main professional body for Palestinian reporters, says more than 260 journalists have been killed and more than 500 injured since October 2023, and that 150 media institutions and workplaces have been completely or partly destroyed. Many of those killed and injured were freelance journalists.
High cost, low pay
Freelancers carry a disproportionate share of the risk in war zones. CPJ found that 43 of the journalists and media workers killed in 2024, more than a third of the total and a record high, were freelancers, who “often face the most danger because they have the fewest resources.” CPJ’s data shows that the killing of freelance journalists has been rising steadily since 2020, before surging in 2024.
The following year was deadlier still, with a record 129 journalists and media workers killed in 2025. CPJ says freelancers may lack institutional support and legal protections, and its safety guide notes they may have to find and pay for their own insurance. The Rory Peck Trust, a charity that supports freelancers, said nearly half of its 2025 crisis grants went to Palestinian journalists in Gaza.
When al-Qadoumi told the media outlets she worked with that she had been seriously wounded, she says they were understanding.
“They stood by me, and their position was very honorable on a human level,” she said. “But honestly, there was no financial compensation or risk insurance.”
Al-Qadoumi paid for her own treatment and for replacing her destroyed equipment. Cameras and gear are expensive and hard to come by in Gaza because Israel restricts their entry, which she believes is a deliberate attempt to silence journalists in Gaza by making their work more difficult. Al-Qadoumi replaces her gear piece by piece, wherever she can find it, whenever she can afford it.
‘The full responsibility falls on the journalist alone‘
Mohammed al-Khatib, 38, a photojournalist and filmmaker, said most agreements between freelancers and international agencies are verbal, with no written rights, health insurance, or job security.
“Media agencies always take the material and set the price without taking any responsibility for the journalist,” he said. “So the full responsibility falls on the journalist alone.”
During the war, al-Khatib turned to documentary film. His first, Ma’lesh, made with Moroccan director Najat Boutafsout, told the story of Gaza’s journalists and artists. It won third place at the International Film School Festival of Tétouan (FIDEC) but brought him only “moral recognition” and no money. Money was never the point, he said: he wanted to document what people were living through.
His second, Worse than Nuclear Bombing: A Family’s Story of Resilience, follows a doctor and mother of three torn between her patients and her children. It won best first documentary at the Luleå International Film Festival in Sweden and best short documentary about war and its aftermath at the Bridge of Peace festival in France, and was selected for the San Diego Arab Film Festival, the Chicago Palestine Film Festival, and the Beirut International Women Film Festival. This time, he was compensated for his work.
“Some agencies impose a take-it-or-leave-it rate, and with so few opportunities, many journalists accept prices that bear no relation to the risks they take,” al-Khatib said.
Shrinking horizons
Now even that work is drying up. Thaer Abed, 33, who reports on how the war shapes ordinary people’s lives, said international outlets have turned their attention to other fronts. They are covering Lebanon, Iran, and announcements about international plans to end the war in Gaza, where a ceasefire agreement was signed in October 2025.
Stories from Gaza, once central to global coverage, are now treated as “a secondary column that can often be done without,” he said.
“Before, I would pitch many ideas and they would be accepted without preconditions, as long as they told the reality of the war,” Abed said. “Now most of them are rejected.”
The decline in work has come as the cost of living in Gaza has soared. Many freelance journalists can no longer repair or replace damaged equipment, and some can barely afford to feed their displaced families.
Ahed Farawneh, secretary-general of the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, said that media outlets are paying low prices that do not reflect the risks freelancers take. With Gaza’s media offices destroyed, journalists work from hospitals and displacement tents that are at constant risk of being bombed, without any safety equipment or protection, he explained.
The syndicate urges journalists to insist on written contracts, warning that verbal agreements open the door to underpayment and lost rights. According to Farawneh, the syndicate has received a number of disputes between journalists and local and foreign agencies, and has resolved some through its professional rights committees. Others are still ongoing.
“This has undoubtedly affected the documentation of the Palestinian narrative and limited it,” Farawneh said. “But the Palestinian journalist can defy every circumstance and obstacle to overcome these difficulties and expose the occupation’s crimes to the world.”
For freelancers like Abed, whose pitches were once readily accepted at the height of the genocide in Gaza, the stories have not changed, but the demand for them has. The most common answer he receives now is “no need.”
This story was published in collaboration with Egab.
