By Ammar M. Rajab Valerie Zink, a longtime Canadian photojournalist and stringer for Reuters, has resigned from the news agency, citing w...
By Ammar M. Rajab
Valerie Zink, a longtime Canadian photojournalist and stringer for Reuters, has resigned from the news agency, citing what she described as its complicity in Israel’s systematic killing of journalists in Gaza and its uncritical publication of Israeli military claims.
In a powerful public statement released on Tuesday, Zink said her resignation was a response to Reuters’ role in “justifying and enabling the systematic assassination” of Palestinian journalists. She referenced the killing of at least 245 journalists in Gaza since October 2023, and said continuing to work for Reuters under such conditions had become “impossible.”
“For the past eight years, I have worked as a stringer for Reuters news agency,” Zink wrote. “At this point, it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza. I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more.”
Zink pointed in particular to Reuters’ coverage of the August 10 Israeli airstrike in Gaza City that killed Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif along with his entire crew. Rather than defend Al-Sharif, whose work won a Pulitzer Prize for Reuters, the agency repeated Israeli claims that he was affiliated with Hamas – allegations Zink described as “entirely baseless” and part of a pattern of “genocidal fabrications” that many Western outlets have repeated without verification.
Just days after Al-Sharif’s death, Reuters itself lost another journalist, Hossam Al-Masri, who was among five reporters killed on August 25 in a double airstrike targeting Nasser Hospital. Zink condemned the so-called “double tap” strategy, in which civilian sites are bombed, then struck again when medics and journalists arrive.
“Reuters’ willingness to perpetuate Israel’s propaganda has not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide,” Zink stated.
She also cited a broader media failure, quoting journalist Jeremy Scahill of Drop Site News, who recently criticised major Western outlets for “sanitising war crimes and dehumanising victims” through uncritical amplification of official Israeli narratives. According to Zink, such reporting has helped create the conditions for the deadliest period for journalists in modern history.
“Western media outlets have made possible the killing of more journalists in two years on one tiny strip of land than in WWI, WWII, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Ukraine combined,” she wrote.
Zink expressed deep frustration that Reuters failed to defend Al-Sharif even after Israeli forces publicly marked him for death, following his reporting on famine conditions in Gaza. “It did not compel them to report on his death honestly when he was hunted and killed weeks later,” she wrote.
Despite valuing her work with Reuters over the past eight years, Zink said she could no longer wear her press pass “with anything but deep shame and grief.”
“I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza – the bravest and best to ever live – but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind.”
Reuters has not yet issued a public response to Zink’s resignation or the allegations raised in her statement. According to press freedom groups, Gaza remains the most dangerous place in the world for journalists, with media workers being routinely targeted in violation of international law.
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