Panel discussion: The New Censorship

How is the horrific war in Gaza – increasingly defined by legal scholars as genocide – being covered in Israel, the UK, the US, and beyond? What kind of challenges and pressures are met by reporters and newsrooms when approaching Israel and Palestine today? And what does it all have to do with decades of authoritarian efforts to capture and intimidate the media?

In The New Censorship: How the War on the Media is Taking Us Down (Footnote, 2025), researcher and former journalist Ayala Panievsky draws on cutting-edge research to explain the media’s surrender to populist attacks on critical journalism. ‘Just like we came to realise that we will have to fight for the planet if we want to keep living on it, it is time we all become actively responsible for our information environment’, she concludes. The book offers a guide for journalists, policymakers, and activists who wish to join the fight to revolutionise the media and save our right to know.

Panievsky explores the limitations of current media coverage on Israel and Palestine. How is impartiality being weaponised by populists in power to restrict press freedom? What kind of loyalty tests are journalists faced with? Will this become a reckoning moment, from which journalism can grow and improve? And what may be the role of citizens and policymakers in the battle to reshape our information environment?

Dr Ayala Panievsky is a researcher, journalist and activist specialising in populism, media under attack, and democratic backsliding at the City University of London. She holds a PhD from Cambridge University, for which she was awarded the International Communications Association’s 2024 Outstanding Dissertation Award. Panievsky works with journalists worldwide to improve the future of news and what we get to know in times of new and sophisticated threats to democracy. She is the recipient of prestigious grants and awards, and her research has been covered in the BBC, The News Agents, LBC, Politico and more.

Arwa Damon is a five-time Emmy winning former CNN Senior International Correspondent. While her career has taken her across the globe, she is best known for her coverage of the Middle East, especially out of Iraq and Syria, and for the human stories she brings into her reporting. She is also the recipient of numerous Peabody Awards, the Investigative Reporters and Editors award for her coverage of the 2012 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, and the prestigious “Courage in Journalism” award by the International Women’s Media Foundations. In 2015 Arwa founded her charity, the International Network for Aid, Relief, and Assistance, INARA, that provides comprehensive holistic medical and mental health care for children impacted by war and natural disasters who otherwise would not be receiving treatment. In 2022 Arwa parted ways with CNN to direct and produce the award-winning documentary “Seize the Summit” and focus on growing and expanding INARA. She is also a non-resident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council. Arwa had been to Gaza four times with INARA before she was denied entry by Israel earlier this year.

James Rodgers is an author and journalist. During two decades of covering international news, he reported on the end of the Soviet Union; the wars in Chechnya; the coming to power of Vladimir Putin; 9/11; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the 2003 war in Iraq; Russia’s war with Georgia in 2008. He completed correspondent postings for the BBC in Moscow, Brussels, and Gaza. He now teaches in the Journalism Department at City St George’s, University of London.