Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

cpj.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 968 posts

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#41

Post by rightbyte »

Qem wrote: post #2

Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20240303014749/https://pressgazet... > Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers. These figures are insane! The number of journalists killed crossed the threshold where Gaza journalists can be declared officially decimated, according to the historical definition of the term as 1/10 killed[1]. I noticed if we plot the journalist killings ag…

Is there a way to calculate significance of the fit? I.e. something similar to the Student's t-test?

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#42

Post by hmcq6 »

ciconia wrote: post #25

> Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers. One possible explanation is that journalists have a much higher probability of being close to where the fighting is, than healthcare workers.

That's a bad explanation because it relies on an assumption about how the press in Palestine are operating on the ground and I'm guessing no one on hackernews actually has that info.

We don't know that reporters are rushing into danger or hanging out where the danger is going to be.

In fact, a lot of the "reporters" who we've been watching were never war reporters to begin with. Motaz, for instance was an aspiring travel photographer. Bisan was a filmmaker. Wael was the cheif of Al-Jazera in Gaza.

They're (most likely) not seeking out death and war, they're just reporting on the condition of their city, of their people.

It also ignores 75 years of history. CPJ stated this was the deadliest conflict for journalists in the past 30 years. Reporters Without Borders has accused Israel of intentionally targeting journalists. Human Rights Watch signed a letter stating the US needed to put pressure on Israel to stop killing journalists. Amnesty international says Israel must be investigated for the war crime of killing journalists.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#43

Post by hmcq6 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #31
simpletone wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high. Would be interesting to see what the death rates for journalists, medics, soldiers, etc was in afghan war, iraq war, vietnam war, etc. I highly doubt any reaches 10%.

> 10% would be considered an extremely high death rate for soldiers involved in the fighting. Even 2.5% for healthcare workers is ridiculously high. Hamas based their operations where conventional rules of war prohibit fire. That makes comparing casualty rates incredibly difficult. (To my knowledge, nobody else has done this so comprehensively. Though given its success, I expect it to be emulated. Which unfortunately…

This is unfounded.

I'm still waiting on a single shred of evidence to drop about the AP building from 2-3 years ago https://apnews.com/article/israel-middle-east-business-israe...

> Which unfortunately means prohibitions on bombing hospitals, schools and places of worship are now obsolete.

Even if Hamas was fighting from hospitals and schools that is not how this works. Israel would be required to give those schools and hospitals warning first which they have not been doing.

And assuming (incorrectly) that Israel was following the rules of engagement and giving the civilians warning, why are they hitting the refuge camps with 2000lb dumb bombs? Why not guided bombs?

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#45

Post by Gabriel54 »

transformi wrote: post #39

[flagged]

Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist? Also, it is not clear what "working in Hamas" means since they formed the government of the Gaza strip, so people "working in Hamas" would include all public officials, civil servants, etc. Does Israel have the right to kill all the sanitation workers of the Gaza strip since they also "work in Hamas"?

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#46

Post by Qem »

rightbyte wrote: post #41
Qem wrote: post #2

Archived: http://web.archive.org/web/20240303014749/https://pressgazet... > Around 10% of Gaza's journalists have been killed versus 2.5% of healthcare workers. These figures are insane! The number of journalists killed crossed the threshold where Gaza journalists can be declared officially decimated, according to the historical definition of the term as 1/10 killed[1]. I noticed if we plot the journalist killings ag…

Is there a way to calculate significance of the fit? I.e. something similar to the Student's t-test?

Surely there is, but I still didn't figure out how to. I'm not used to work with this Wallenius distribution (indeed, I discovered it existed a few days ago, while working on this problem). To get some semblance of error bars, I just took max/min overs a couple tens of runner ups. But I explained in detail the assumptions in my reasoning and posted the source code for my analysis, so people with better statistical shops than me can replicate and improve upon it.

But the uncertainty here probably is dominated by uncertainty in the inputs. I used the lower estimates for journalists deaths, about 90 on 01/03. But some organizations publish figures as high as 130. The uncertainty in total deaths also high, I would not be surprised if 1.5-2x higher, given all missing people.

Re: Journalist casualties in the Israel-Gaza war

#48

Post by jncfhnb »

Gabriel54 wrote: post #45
transformi wrote: post #39

[flagged]

Suppose I am a country at war with the United States. Do I have the right to kill every American journalist? Also, it is not clear what "working in Hamas" means since they formed the government of the Gaza strip, so people "working in Hamas" would include all public officials, civil servants, etc. Does Israel have the right to kill all the sanitation workers of the Gaza strip since they also "work in Hamas"?

The rules of war are completely out the door when one side routinely pretends to be civilian, which is a war crime.

Which is not to say it’s just to go committing whichever crimes you want, but discussing legal rights is largely pointless because it is immediately a lawless war.

Post reply on HN