pmc: Government fails to renew accreditation of Palestinian journalists
The Palestine Media Center has published a CPJ complaint over Israel’s refusal to renew the press accreditiations of many Palestinian and foreign journalists.
According to a joint statement issued by the bureau chiefs of 29 international media organizations on January 15, the GPO has failed to renew press accreditations for all but a few of the Palestinian journalists employed by these organizations since December 31, when the old accreditations expired. The media companies have said that some foreign journalists, mostly camera crews, have also been refused accreditation.[...]
GPO director Daniel Seaman has noted that the GPO cards are not travel documents. He argues that the government has a right to regulate press accreditation and that his office is only applying the law and other regulations in determining who receives a card. But the new measures will have a clearly negative impact on news gathering by significantly restricting the ability of both Palestinian journalists and the international media to carry out their normal duties. We fear that these measures may have been taken to curb the work of Palestinian journalists whom Israeli officials have in the past accused of biased reporting.