Inside a newsroom: +972 Magazine, Editorial line versus front lines

By Martin Roux, head of RSF's crisis desk

Journalist Ghousoon Bisharat had been editor-in-chief of +972 Magazine for less than a month when the attacks of 7 October 2023 took place. The massacre of Israeli civilians by the armed wing of Hamas has triggered the longest war in Israel's history, described as "genocide" by the UN Human Rights Council's commission of inquiry, as well as a turning point in the practice of journalism in the country. "The vast majority of Israeli journalists failed in giving the service to their public," she laments, criticising media coverage that has largely obscured the dramatic humanitarian consequences of Israel's military response in the Gaza Strip.

The editorial team at +972 Magazine, for its part, has not strayed from its editorial line. "Accurate journalism, but also fair," explains Bisharat. "Journalism that understands the power dynamics, who controls the lives of everybody in this land, in Israel Palestine : an apartheid regime."

To make this rare voice heard in the Israeli media landscape, this investigative outlet relies on a unique model: a binational, gender-balanced editorial team, made up of Palestinians, residents of the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza or citizens of Israel, and Jewish Israelis. The outlet's name, the most commonly used telephone code in Israel and Palestine, reflects this understanding of a shared space.

"The atrocities of 7 October and the genocide in Gaza made us even more of believers in our core values," adds the editor-in-chief. Founded in 2010 with a handful of volunteer bloggers, in response (then) to the Israeli media's coverage of the 2009 war in Gaza, +972 Magazine now has 24 employees, almost all of whom are journalists.

"The demand for what we have to offer is greater than ever," notes +972 Magazine executive director, Haggai Matar. For example, their investigation into the Israeli army's use of Artificial Intelligence to identify targets in the Gaza Strip, published in April 2024, attracted over 3 million readers.

In 2014, this editorial project expanded with a Hebrew-language publication: Sikha Mekomit ("Local Call", in English). Journalist Orly Noy, who is also chair of the NGO B'Tselem, was involved in its launch, in response (once again) to a war in Gaza that same year. "We were working around the clock to gather information from Palestinian sources and translate [them] and bring them to the Israeli public in Hebrew because no one in the Israeli media was speaking about it," she recalls.

While the aim of bringing a Palestinian perspective to the Israeli media discourse remains central to its initial values, "we exist in a very, very different reality today," laments Orly Noy, who notes that "democracy and human rights are not values anymore." But rather than give-up, she and her editorial team will persevere she says, despite this changed media landscape. "We are probably needed today even more than before."

This article was originally published in French in the March 2026 edition of the RSF Photo Album "100 Photos for Press Freedom", with all proceeds supporting the organization's work.