What Israel's bombing of Iran's state broadcaster says about its targeting of journalists
The attack, which interrupted a live broadcast, killed at least two members of staff — news editor Nima Rajabpour and secretariat worker Masoumeh Azimi — and injured several others, according to state-affiliated media.
In footage widely shared online, Sahar Emami, an anchor for the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, was seen fleeing the studio as the screen behind her filled with smoke. Moments earlier, she had told viewers: 'You hear the sound of the aggressor attacking the truth.'
The strike destroyed the building — known as the Glass Building — which burned through the night. Israel immediately claimed responsibility.
Defense Minister Israel Katz had issued a warning less than an hour earlier, calling IRIB a 'propaganda and incitement megaphone,' urging up to 330,000 nearby residents to evacuate.
The attack drew swift condemnation from Iranian officials. Esmaeil Baqaei, spokesperson for Iran's Foreign Ministry, called it 'a wicked act of war crime,' urging the international community to demand justice from Israel for its attack on the media.
Israel is responsible for the majority of journalist killings globally in 2024, the highest number by a single country in one year since the Committee to Protect Journalists began documenting this data in 1992.
Source: CPJ
'The world is watching,' Baqaei wrote on X. 'Israeli regime is the biggest enemy of truth and is the No#1 killer of journalists and media people.'
Over the past week, the long-running shadow war between Israel and Iran has escalated dramatically. On Friday, Israel launched a series of airstrikes on Iranian nuclear and military facilities, including the Natanz enrichment site.
With the stated aim of preventing Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon, the strikes caused significant damage to the country's nuclear infrastructure and military command structure, with multiple high-ranking commanders killed.
Iran has retaliated with missile barrages targeting Israeli cities and military bases. Civilian casualties have mounted on both sides, and major cities like Tehran and Tel Aviv have experienced widespread panic and disruption.
The Israeli attack on IRIB shows media workers are not exempt from the violence.
Sara Qudah, regional director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said she was 'appalled by Israel's attack on Iran's state television channel,' noting that the lack of international censure 'has emboldened it to target media elsewhere in the region.'
Loreley Hahn Herrera, lecturer in global media and digital cultures at SOAS University of London, echoed this view.
'The exceptional status through which Western powers have historically shielded Israel has allowed it to systematically commit international law and human rights violations without ever being held accountable or suffer any legal, financial, military or diplomatic repercussions,' she told Arab News.
'This has indeed emboldened Israel to attack not only Palestine and Iran. In the last months, Israel has broken the ceasefire in Lebanon, bombed Yemen, and Syria as well.'
Israel's treatment of media workers in combat zones has long been documented by press freedom organizations. Despite repeated calls for accountability, Israel has consistently evaded consequences.
'Israel has a sophisticated political communication strategy which rests on its hasbara (propaganda) that has worked hand in hand with its material strategies to control the public spaces in the West through repeating narratives about victimhood and its right to defend itself,' Dina Matar, professor of political communication and Arab media at SOAS, told Arab News.
Monday's strike in Tehran closely mirrors Israel's record in Gaza and the West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023. Under the banner of 'eliminating terrorists,' Israel has killed at least 183 journalists in Palestine and Lebanon, according to CPJ. Others put the figure closer to 220.
A separate report published in April by the Costs of War project at Brown University described the Gaza conflict as 'the worst ever for journalists.'
Titled 'News Graveyards: How Dangers to War Reporters Endanger the World,' the study concluded that more journalists have been killed in Gaza than in all major US wars combined.
The report was swiftly attacked by Israeli nationalists, who dismissed it as 'garbage' and factually flawed for not linking the journalists killed to militant activity.
'There is no policy of targeting journalists,' a senior Israeli officer said last year, attributing the deaths to the scale and intensity of the bombardment.
But Herrera disagrees.
'Israel is not only targeting journalists, it is targeting the families of the journalists as a strategy to deter their coverage and punish them for reporting the war crimes Israel commits on a daily basis in occupied Palestine,' she said.
Herrera cited several examples where Israel appeared to punish journalists by targeting their families. One case was that of Al Jazeera's Gaza bureau chief, Wael Dahdouh, who was broadcasting live when he learned that his wife, daughter, son, and grandchild had been killed in an Israeli airstrike in October 2023.
A more recent case involved photojournalist Fatima Hassouna, who was killed alongside several family members. Both attacks, Israel claimed, were aimed at Hamas operatives, but critics say they reflect a broader strategy of silencing coverage through collective punishment.
Yet accusations of Israel's targeting of journalists precede the last 20 months.
'Israel has a long and documented history of targeting Palestinian journalists,' said Matar, pointing to the 1972 assassination of writer Ghassan Kanafani in Beirut.
A prominent Palestinian author and militant, Kanafani was considered to be a leading novelist of his generation and one of the Arab world's leading Palestinian writers.
He was killed along with his 17-year-old niece, Lamees, by an explosive device planted in his car by Mossad, in one of the first known extrajudicial killings for which the Israeli spy agency ever claimed responsibility.
More recently, in May 2022, Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot dead by an Israeli soldier during a raid in Jenin, despite wearing a press vest. Initial Israeli claims blaming Palestinian fire were quickly disproven by independent investigations and the UN.
A 2025 documentary identified the suspected shooter, but no one has been held accountable.
Foreign media workers have also been killed. In 2014, Italian journalist Simone Camilli and his Palestinian colleague Ali Shehda Abu Afash died when an unexploded Israeli bomb detonated while they were reporting in Gaza.
In 2003, Welsh documentarian James Miller was fatally shot by Israeli forces while filming in Rafah.
A year earlier, Italian photojournalist Raffaele Ciriello — on assignment for Corriere della Sera — was shot dead by Israeli gunfire in Ramallah during the Second Intifada, becoming the first foreign journalist killed in that conflict.
No one has been held accountable in any of these cases.
'The reason behind Israel's targeting and killing of journalists is to send a clear message and instill fear of reporting Israel's military campaign in Gaza and the West Bank, as it can carry the consequence of death and/or injury,' said Herrera, who noted Israel's refusal to allow international media into Gaza as part of a wider strategy to monopolize the narrative.
'This is an attempt to minimize or flat out stop any negative coverage of Israeli actions in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories,' she said. 'Israel does not want international media, and particularly Western media, to cover their genocide campaign and their ongoing and systematic war crimes … and push further the delegitimization of Israel.'
While Israel has so far refused to grant broader media access to the enclave, Western news organizations and human rights groups have attempted to push back against the Israeli narrative, arguing that affiliation with outlets like Al-Aqsa TV or Iran's state broadcaster IRIB does not justify extrajudicial killings.
'News outlets, even propagandist ones, are not legitimate military targets,' the Freedom of the Press Foundation said in a statement on Monday. 'Bombing a studio during a live broadcast will not impede Iran's nuclear program.'
As the conflict with Iran escalates, incidents like Monday's bombing are likely to face growing scrutiny. For many observers, Israel's actions are becoming increasingly indefensible, and international tolerance for such attacks may be nearing its limit.
'The international community has played an important role in allowing Israel to act in this manner,' said Herrera.
'Since its establishment in 1948, and even before that though the Balfour Declaration in 1917, the West has protected Israel in the international relations arena.
'The best example of this is the use of the US veto in the UN Security Council or the ever-present declarations that Israel 'has a right to defend itself' by European and American political leadership.
'Until the international community effectively implements sanctions, stops funding and arming Israel, we will only continue to witness Israel's brazen violations of international and human rights law.
'We cannot expect Israel to self-regulate because Israel is not a democracy. Its political and legal systems are subservient to the Zionist ideology of colonization and racial supremacy, and will act to satisfy these aims.'
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