Every November 2, the world pauses at least officially to mark the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists. It’s a date meant to honour the brave and the fallen, to demand justice for those silenced. But this year, the pause feels hollow. The numbers are not just alarming, they’re numbing. Tens of journalists have been killed or murdered across the globe, many in Gaza, their names becoming statistics before their stories could even be told.
There’s something deeply unsettling about how normalized this has become. The death of a journalist, once a rallying cry for outrage, is now met with a sigh, a line in a report, a fleeting hashtag. The world scrolls on. Impunity thrives not only because killers go unpunished, but because the world seems increasingly comfortable with silence.
The principle is simple: journalism exists to disturb power. That’s its job. To ask questions, to dig where it’s inconvenient, to show what others want hidden. But disturb power long enough, and power bites back. The war zones are only the most visible fronts, Gaza, Ukraine, Mexico, Sudan, Myanmar but the war on truth has no borders. From digital harassment to surveillance laws, from smear campaigns to “accidental” airstrikes, the message to journalists is the same: stay quiet, or else.
And yet, amid the smoke and ruins, they keep writing. They keep filming, photographing, sending dispatches from places most of us would never dare to go. The irony is brutal, those who risk everything to bring truth to light are often the first to be buried in darkness. Their deaths are explained away as collateral damage, their names footnoted in the margins of war. But every journalist killed is not just a life lost, it’s a story buried, a question left unasked, a light turned off in a darkening world.
Nowhere is that darkness more suffocating than in Gaza. Over the past year, journalists there have paid the highest possible price for doing their job. They’ve reported through bombings, displacement, and loss. Many have written their last words while the world watched their cities crumble. Their cameras captured not only destruction but resilience, the human faces beneath the statistics. And yet, when they are killed, accountability evaporates into diplomatic fog. Governments release statements of “regret” or “concern,” and the cycle resumes.
The uncomfortable truth is that impunity for these crimes persists because it serves power. Silence benefits those who fear exposure. The less we see, the less we know; the less we know, the easier it is to manipulate reality. It’s no accident that autocrats, militias, and militaries alike target journalists first. Control the narrative, and you control perception and perception is half the war.
But impunity is not just about the killers. It’s about the system that enables them. It’s about the editors forced to self-censor to protect their staff. It’s about the international bodies that issue statements but rarely act. It’s about the audience ...yes us, who sometimes prefer comfort over truth. We click, we share, we lament, but we move on. Journalism dies not only from bullets, but from apathy.
Still, something stubborn remains alive in the profession. Call it defiance. Call it duty. Every reporter who picks up a pen in defiance of fear is committing an act of rebellion. Every photograph smuggled out, every article published despite threats, is a small victory for truth. Journalism endures precisely because it refuses to submit. Even when entire systems try to erase it, it finds a way to speak.
But survival alone is not enough. We cannot continue to romanticize journalists as martyrs while doing little to protect them. Commemorating their deaths once a year is not justice—it’s ritual. Real accountability means demanding investigations, enforcing laws, and cutting through the excuses that follow every killing. It means telling the world that a journalist’s death is not inevitable, not “part of the job,” but a crime against everyone’s right to know.
Perhaps the question to ask this November 2 is not how many journalists have died, but why their killers walk free. Why governments that proclaim respect for press freedom allow these deaths to fade without consequence. Why we continue to treat journalism as both essential and expendable at once.
The uncomfortable reality is that ending impunity requires more than ceremonies—it requires courage. The same courage journalists show in the field must now be mirrored by those with the power to act. Without justice, the world’s pledge to protect press freedom is a hollow promise.
As bombs fall, as regimes tighten their grip, as truth becomes negotiable, the cost of silence rises. When the last journalist is silenced, the last lie will stand unchallenged. And by then, it will be too late.
So yes, November 2 is a day to remember. But remembrance without action is another form of silence. The world doesn’t need more condolences it needs accountability. It needs governments that fear the cost of killing truth-tellers. It needs citizens who refuse to look away.
Because when a journalist is murdered and no one is punished, it’s not just their voice that dies, it’s a piece of democracy itself. And if we allow that to keep happening, one day the silence will be complete. The headlines will vanish. And all that will remain is the sound of power speaking to itself, unchecked and unopposed.
Until then, those who still believe in truth must keep writing, keep filming, keep asking, no matter the risk. Because even in a world where silence has become the headline, journalism remains the last act of faith that truth still matters
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