New oral history project eulogises slain Palestinian journalists via friends’ voice notes
Middle East Eye reports on 12 August 2026:
When Anas al-Sharif was killed in Gaza by an Israeli air strike one year ago, the Reuters news agency ran the headline, “Israel kills Al Jazeera journalist it says was Hamas leader”.
In 2024, at the height of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Anas had helped Reuters win a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography. But the outlet chose to remember the 28-year-old within the scope of Israel’s unproven narrative about him – as many other news organisations have done to more than 200 Palestinian journalists killed in Gaza since 2023.
As of Wednesday, a new project called The Living Record is looking to rectify that by telling the stories of slain Palestinian journalists through the eyes and experiences of their colleagues on the ground.
The oral history site launched with eulogies for 40 journalists, with dozens more to come later in the year.
“This project is seriously – and at a mammoth scale – a record of failure,” a member of the New York War Crimes editorial collective, which was initiated by the group Writers Against The War On Gaza (Wawog), told Middle East Eye on the condition that they not be named. “[This is] a record of failure of mainstream media, of western media, of international institutions to protect individuals [as governed] by international law.” Wawog is behind The Living Record.
“What this project does is it asks you to listen to these people speaking to you as if they were your friend, and so that was one of the really big prompts of the project itself,” MEE was told.
“Often when we spoke to these [Palestinian] journalists, there’s a tendency for them to speak in a very formal register because they’re accustomed to that being the only way that people would be willing to listen, whether on a live broadcast or in a formal interview where they’re anticipating a critique or a challenge – that they must present themselves as sort of indefatigable, impossible to move. We didn’t want that.”
The result is profound. The voice notes on the site range from journalists who sound broken but steadfast as they recount the relatable, daily habits of their colleagues, to others who speak directly to their slain friends, as if we, the audience, are listening in on a private conversation.
Who is a journalist?
Many have resigned themselves to becoming “martyrs” at any moment. That’s because, according to the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate, at least 270 Palestinian media workers have been killed by Israel in Gaza.
The Committee to Protect Journalists, however, has a significantly lower count. The mainstream media within the US and Canada have largely defaulted to CPJ for the figures, especially as most choose not to source local organisations or the Palestinian health ministry.