TEHRAN – The Israeli regime bombed the main building of the Iranian Broadcasting System (IRIB) Islamic Republic, but journalists were intricately complex to cover the ongoing Iran-Israel war that began with an unprovoked attack by the regime early on Friday.
One anchor was still providing news when the Israeli bomb landed in the studio where she was. She returned to live broadcasts elsewhere a few minutes later, vowing to continue her job as a journalist as long as she is alive. “When I die, others will reveal your crime to the world in my place,” she said, maintaining a calm attitude, looking directly at the camera.
IRIB owns the largest news outlet in the country. It has actively covered Israeli attacks on civilians and civil infrastructure. This is because the report challenged the Israeli regime’s attempts to attract wedges between the government and its people.
At the scene, one journalist standing outside the building in Ilibu was engulfed in flames with the smoke mentioned above. “If this is your way of silence our voices, please tell me that it doesn’t work,” he said that his palm was visibly bleeding.
Old tactics for targeting Israeli journalists
The intentional targeting of journalists and media infrastructure constitutes war crimes under international law. The Geneva Convention and the Roman law of the International Criminal Court explicitly protect civilians, including journalists working in conflict zones, from direct attacks.
Israel has a long history of targeting journalists and media outlets across the region. During the ongoing war in Gaza, the regime intentionally killed more than 170 Palestinian journalists. He killed a refugee tent, and was killed on one strike along with someone in the car on duty and the whole family.
The administration targets journalists despite existing bans for several reasons. It controls narratives, suppresses harmful information, silences critical reports that expose or challenges the legitimacy of violations, threatens outlets in other media to self-censorship, removes witnesses from the battlefield, and obscures their own actions with independent reports. Such attacks can create a vacuum of information and allow the Zionist regime to operate with less accountability.