Palestinian journalists in Gaza have been targeted by Israel’s military onslaught since October 2023 [Getty/file photo]
More than 370 prominent UK media figures have signed a petition demanding that the Royal Television Society (RTS) reinstates an award intended to recognise Palestinian journalists in Gaza that was cancelled in a last-minute decision last week.
Among those urging the award’s reinstatement include veteran broadcaster Jonathan Dimbleby, leading Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and television and radio presenter Sangita Myska.
In their letter, the media figures demanded transparency behind its decision to cancel the Special Award, meant to highlight the resilience of Palestinian journalists reporting from the enclave, which has been ruthlessly bombarded by Israel for almost one and a half years.
In the letter coordinated by UK Screen Industry and published by Artists for Palestine UK, the media workers say that Palestinian journalists are “dying in unprecedented numbers in order to bring the news to British screens”.
“[Their] work has made a profound impact, showcasing resourcefulness, creativity, and enterprise under extreme conditions, which the RTS itself values in its awards criteria”, they stressed.
“Is the RTS suggesting that everyone in Gaza, and specifically its journalists, can be assumed to be guilty of something and must be proven innocent before they are worthy of recognition for their hard work and sacrifices? Has the RTS ever applied this standard to any other groups of journalists anywhere else in the world?”.
Israel has routinely targeted and killed Palestinian journalists covering the events of the Gaza Strip, since 7 October, 2023, in what has been described by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) as the deadliest conflict for media workers since 1992.
The Gaza media office puts the death toll at 202 journalists as of March 2025, whereas CPJ states the toll as 171.
The media figures added that RTS’ decision “reveals a concerning lack of independence, due process and accountability”. It also strongly urges that the charity awards the prize to the Gaza journalists during the upcoming Television Awards ceremony on 25 March.
Their demands also include information on the timeline which lead to the cancellation of the award, as well as the disclosure of any third parties who might have pressured the charity into scrapping the prize.
Additionally, Dimbleby, famed for his decades of work at the BBC, called the RTS executives “cowards” for scrapping the award, according to The Telegraph.
Following the award’s cancellation last week, Adrian Wells, chair of the RTS Television Journalism Awards, said the charity did not want to “add fuel to the fire in this current environment” by giving the award, according to US website Deadline.
Wells was possibly referring to criticism surrounding a BBC documentary titled Gaza: How to Survive in a War Zone, which was later removed from the broadcaster’s iPlayer platform following pro-Israeli and right-wing backlash over the documentary’s teenage narrator. Abdullah Al-Yazouri’s father Ayman served as Gaza deputy agriculture minister, a government role understood as having “ties to Hamas”.
Initially, the charity said it wanted “to recognise the journalists’ “enormous efforts over the last 18 months or so of extreme pressure and endeavour”.
The signatories also copied their letter to UK monarch and Royal Patron of the RTS, Charles III, requesting to meet with him. Â
