NPR Public Editor by Poynter's Kelly McBride

NPR and other Western news organizations have been pressuring Israel for months to let their journalists travel independently into Gaza to report on the war. So far, Israel has refused to do so.

When the Israeli military offered to escort a group of journalists, including one from NPR, into Gaza on Nov. 5 to see the “yellow line” — the area now controlled by Israeli forces where Palestinians are forbidden to even approach — the network had to decide if the constraints imposed by Israel were worth the trip.

In order to go, NPR had to agree to let military censors view the reporter’s raw material, including videos and interviews, before the network could use it. It’s the kind of compromise that serious journalists refuse in almost every other scenario, because it undermines a reporter’s ability to make independent judgments about what story to tell. Politicians don’t get to see raw material gathered from the campaign trail. Athletes don’t get to see the videos or photos recorded during training camp. But when it comes to Gaza and other war zones, it’s often the only way for a journalist to get a glimpse of what’s happening on the ground.

After discussing with his editors, NPR international correspondent Daniel Estrin went on the trip. He reported a story for All Things Considered, did a two-way interview with Morning Edition, and he created a video that was posted on NPR’s Instagram account. The audience reacted immediately on social media, posting dozens of comments criticizing his decision to embed.

We asked Estrin and one of his editors how they made their decision. — Kelly McBride

Illustration by Carlos Carmonamedina

Here are a few quotes from the Public Editor's inbox that resonated with us. Letters are edited for length and clarity. You can share your questions and concerns with us through the NPR Contact page.

Why a reporter agreed to comply with Israeli censors

After NPR posted a video to Instagram documenting international correspondent Daniel Estrin’s trip into Gaza with the Israeli army, audience members reacted. Here’s a sample of their comments:

@thesilverlining_1970: This is a propaganda trip, not journalism 🤔

@diggy2763: Ended? They never really stopped the bombings. Way to mislead the public @npr are you owned as well?

@yellin4u: Outrageous site, so utterly sad what humans can do to one another. Thank you for being eyes on the destruction. May it never occur again.

@insert_clever_rhetoric: Noting the exact censorship while respectfully accepting the invite and the conversation is the pinnacle of ethical journalism in a situation like this

@tbarclay8: If you can’t interview the opposing side, you know nothing!

Estrin’s entire trip into Gaza with the Israeli military took roughly two hours. It only took a few minutes to travel from the border to the base. Once there, Estrin talked to some of the soldiers, walked to the top of the berm that marks the yellow line, and looked out into the rest of Gaza. He shot video of everything he could. And he turned the camera on himself and recorded his personal observations, some of which made it into his radio report and his Instagram video.

I asked Estrin to describe the journalistic value of the information he gained. He wrote this in an email to me:

“We gained a firsthand perspective we could not have gained in any other way. I visited an elevated Israeli military outpost in northern Gaza with a panoramic view of the devastation of the Shujaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The destruction stretched as far as the eye could see. I also saw an Israeli military outpost up close and could observe the infrastructure Israel has built as it prepares to occupy Gaza for the foreseeable future. I saw up close the vast destruction of Shujaiya within the territory under Israel’s control, seeing entire swaths of depopulated territory Palestinians are not allowed to access. This is a vantage point that’s inaccessible even to Anas Baba, NPR’s journalist on the other side of the yellow line in Gaza City.”

Of course, the information Estrin relayed was only what the Israeli military wanted him to see. The interviews with soldiers produced no stunning revelations. There were no images or voices of Palestinians who have endured the war. It was telling that one soldier was wearing a T-shirt with a graphic design and the words “Hamas Hunting Club.” IDF censors saw the video and did not flag it.

In the end, the military censors cleared the entirety of Estrin’s material for his radio reports. His finished stories were not subject to review.

James Hider, NPR’s Middle East editor, told me that even though embedded reporting trips are limited in their ability to surface information, he believed the NPR audience gained a previously unseen view of the war.

“Daniel has been to Gaza many times before the war, and to hear him experience that moment of seeing that almost everything had gone, I think was a very powerful journalistic moment,” Hider said. “I think a lot of people responded to that.”

Estrin’s view of Gaza isn’t the only perspective the audience has access to. Listeners and readers have also been hearing and seeing work from Anas Baba, a Gaza resident who has survived the war while reporting on it for NPR. But as a Palestinian, Baba could not approach the yellow line.

NPR was transparent about the restrictions. The Instagram video included a caption that described the restrictions Estrin faced, explaining that the censors wouldn’t let Estrin document images of a military map of Gaza. Likewise, the introduction to Estrin’s All Things Considered story explained the restrictions as well. He described the newly erected Israeli military outpost, the surrounding destruction and his own reaction, comparing the neighborhood he used to drive through, which has been reduced to rubble.

He did a two-way interview the next day on Morning Edition with host Leila Fadel. She asked if he could speak to any Palestinians. “Were you able to report freely? To talk to Palestinians? And it’s been over two years, when will Israel start allowing international journalists access without a military escort?”

Estrin answered, “We were restricted on who we could interview. We did not meet Palestinians. And we had to submit our raw audio and video to Israel’s military censor, that’s the law here, but none of the content of this reporting was altered. The Israeli government has a Nov. 23 deadline to tell the Supreme Court its position on independent entry for journalists to Gaza.”

Someone from NPR could have shared more information with the audience, explaining not just the terms of the compromise, but why they agreed to it and what they hoped to gain from this embedded trip.

A reporter from the BBC was on the same trip. The BBC published this note with their story, “Israel does not allow news organisations to report independently from Gaza. Today it took a group of journalists, including the BBC, into the area of the Strip occupied by Israeli forces. The brief visit was highly controlled and offered no access to Palestinians, or other areas of Gaza. Military censorship laws in Israel mean that military personnel were shown our material before publication. The BBC maintained editorial control of this report at all times.”

The note is more explicit than NPR’s explanations. But it still doesn’t address the question of why go at all.

Going forward, it will be important for NPR to address both issues. Many people in the audience want a view into those conversations. Even if they can’t weigh in, seeing NPR’s reasoning for accepting the trip helps the audience judge whether the information gained truly adds to NPR’s overall body of reporting.

Hider wasn’t opposed to this approach. “I think that would be a separate piece,” he said. “That would be an interesting debate to have about the modalities of embedding. But … this was more about Gaza than the reporter. And we wanted our first on-the-ground visit by our correspondent in Israel to, you know, to pack that punch of, you know, what he saw.”

I believe NPR will have more opportunities to let the audience see their deliberations. As the ceasefire progresses and the United Nations’ approved stabilization force takes shape, there will be more opportunities for journalists to travel into Gaza both under official escort and, eventually, on their own, without censors. Then newsrooms will have to weigh the restrictions of the first approach against the safety risks of the second.

The most biting criticism was the accusation that NPR, in accepting the invitation from the military to tour the base, was participating in Israeli propaganda and not journalism.

If this were all that NPR was reporting, that scathing accusation would be closer to true. But NPR has an extensive body of work on the war, including viewpoints from all sides. NPR is one of the only American newsrooms with a reporter in Gaza. And NPR has appropriately focused on the suffering of Gazans over the past two years.

The reporting from the military embed was a single view of the war on a single day from an Israeli military base. It wasn’t the whole truth. But it wasn’t propaganda, either. When added to the broader body of NPR’s reporting, it adds to our understanding of the war. Because Estrin said yes, the NPR audience gained added insights.

Even if it wasn’t groundbreaking, the reporting added value. And Estrin managed to do the work with his eye on the needs of the audience, not on the Israeli soldiers who were escorting him in and out of Gaza. — Kelly McBride

The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on Facebook, Instagram, Threads and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.

Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute

Kelly McBride
Public Editor

Amaris Castillo
Poynter Institute

Nicole Slaughter Graham
Poynter Institute

The Public Editor stands as a source of independent accountability. Created by NPR's board of directors, the Public Editor serves as a bridge between the newsroom and the audience, striving to both listen to the audience's concerns and explain the newsroom's work and ambitions. The office ensures NPR remains steadfast in its mission to present fair, accurate and comprehensive information in service of democracy.

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