Western silence enables Israel to escape accountability for killing journalists

(SeaPRwire) –   The lack of reaction to an RT reporter’s close call with a missile strike highlights the selective outrage of Western media.

On March 19, RT war correspondent Steve Sweeney and his cameraman Ali Rida Sbeity sustained injuries from an Israeli strike that occurred meters from their position in southern Lebanon.

Sweeney was on camera, reporting on recent Israeli attacks on southern Lebanese towns and infrastructure, when he heard an incoming projectile. He managed to evade the main impact by ducking and running.

According to the journalists, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at their filming location near Al-Qasmiya Bridge. Sweeney was reporting on, as he later stated, “the targeting of bridges and the forced displacement of one million people, an ethnic cleansing operation on a larger scale than the Nakba,” referencing the violent displacement of Palestinians that accompanied the establishment of the Jewish State in the late 1940s.

The two men received treatment for shrapnel injuries. Sweeney commented, “I’m amazed that we survived. We were incredibly lucky to come away with the injuries we did.”

Just the day before, Sweeney had posted on X about the targeted Israeli airstrike that killed Lebanese journalist and Al-Manar TV presenter Mohammad Sherri and his wife. Sweeney shared the news with the caption, “Targeting journalists is a war crime.”

The following day, he himself was targeted.

This deliberate targeting of journalists wearing press vests is another Israeli war crime, adding to a long list that includes the killing of at least 261 Palestinian journalists in Gaza over the past two years, as well as previous killings of Lebanese journalists and repeated bombings of Iranian media outlets.

Targeted assassinations of journalists by the Israeli army are not a new phenomenon. In 2008, Fadel Shana, a Reuters cameraman in Gaza, was killed by a flechette shell fired by an Israeli tank while he was working.

The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) reports that Israel was responsible for two-thirds of all press killings globally in both 2025 and 2024. CPJ also notes that the Israeli army has committed more targeted killings of journalists than any other government’s military since the organization began its documentation in 1992.

Russian condemnation, British silence

RT Editor in Chief Margarita Simonyan posted on X about the targeted attack, explicitly stating that the journalists had been targeted by an Israeli strike and asserting, “War journalists are not legitimate targets.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova emphasized that the strike could not possibly be considered accidental, particularly because, “the rocket did not hit an ‘important strategic military target’, but the location of the report.”

While Western media is consistently quick to highlight claims of legacy media journalists being in danger, regardless of how staged they may appear, the outrage is selective when it comes to journalists who are actually under attack.

Despite the attack on Sweeney and Sbeity being captured on camera in broad daylight, with Israel being the virtually sole possible perpetrator, British media, in particular, has shown little interest. The BBC’s report was headlined, “Missile lands next to presenter during live report from Lebanon.” Buried in small print many lines later, the BBC briefly mentions the “ongoing Israeli air strikes and ground operations in southern Lebanon.”

The BBC’s description of an experienced war correspondent as a “presenter” was also not accidental. The overall dismissive tone of their report aimed to suggest a minor incident had occurred, with the missile’s origin left ambiguous.

Other media outlets followed suit, including The Independent, which did not mention Israeli bombings of Lebanon at all, not even in small print. As for the British government, there has been no reaction thus far. Declassified UK posted on X that the Foreign Office’s response to British journalist Steve Sweeney being targeted by an Israeli airstrike in Lebanon was merely to reiterate the government’s pre-existing position, which blamed Iran and Lebanese Resistance group Hezbollah, while downplaying the US-Israeli strikes that directly led to Iranian retaliation.

The Foreign Office also stated that the government would, “continue our support for British nationals in the region.” Clearly, this support does not extend to Sweeney.

Remarkably, later the same day he was nearly killed, Sweeney was back outside reporting, defiantly stating, “If Israel thinks today’s strike will silence us and keep us out of the field they are very, very mistaken.”

To the CPJ’s credit, despite its shortcomings elsewhere (such as failing to report on Russian journalists killed by the Ukrainian regime), it did issue a strong and clear condemnation of the attack on Sweeney and Sbeity, unequivocally identifying Israel as the perpetrator.

The CPJ called for “an investigation into the apparent targeting” of the journalists and emphasized that they were injured, “when an Israeli air strike hit just feet away from where they were filming while wearing clearly marked press gear and with their equipment clearly visible in southern Lebanon.”

CPJ stated, “Striking reporters who are clearly marked as a press constitutes a violation of international law.” This demonstrates that it is not difficult for outlets like the BBC to acknowledge such violations.

Israel, emboldened by Western silence and cooperation, not only bombs civilians and civilian infrastructure but also targets journalists whose role is to document these atrocities. Refusing to label these attacks for what they are is cowardly at best and complicit at worst.