'why i resigned from cnn due to their israeli bias';

Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari fabricated his account for CNN’s Nic Robertson which then got passed along to viewers. (Screenshot from Al Jazeera documentary Failing Gaza: Behind the Lens of Western Media)

Developing as a young journalist without jeopardizing your morals has become incredibly difficult.

While independent journalism is evolving, offering alternative narratives to those spread by the mainstream media machine, the status of the newsroom retains a certain appeal. With bills to pay and personal aspirations to meet, we are discouraged from questioning the ramifications of our words.

It is easy enough to convince yourself that being on the inside is the only way to change things but, as Palestinian journalist Mohammed El-Kurd so incisively wrote: “Once we have protection, we’ll want to stay protected. And once we get some money, we’ll want more and more wealth. When we go back to ourselves after a long career and look deep in our closets for the skin we once wore, we find it shriveled and discarded, foreign to us as we are foreign to it. One could say it is a strategy but we know what the master’s tools will not do.”

Such thoughts had been brewing during my short time as an intern-turned-freelancer at CNN International (CNNi). When I finally resigned, in October last year, they had engulfed me entirely.

I maintain a great deal of respect for many of my former colleagues at CNNi, where coverage of the genocide has been significantly less biased than on CNN domestic, albeit far from innocent, and much more for the Palestinian experts and activists I booked for interviews. My resignation letter highlighted that “the pro-Israeli rhetoric at CNN/CNNi is far too deep-rooted and unwilling to change fast enough to stop what is now a genocide of the Palestinian people.”..........more.........