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September 11, 2025 – Palestine –
Internal emails obtained from Sweden’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs show that the Media Freedom Coalition—a 51-member grouping of countries committed to defending press freedom—struggled to coordinate a rapid, unified response after six Palestinian journalists were killed in Gaza in an Israeli air strike on August 10, 2025, including respected Al Jazeera correspondent Anas al-Sharif.
Members of the coalition received a request from its secretariat to confirm participation by midday on August 20 in a joint statement condemning violence against media workers. However, only 16 countries had responded by that deadline. The emails show that some countries, including Sweden, requested more time or wanted to know which other nations had signed on before committing.
When the final statement was issued on August 21, 21 countries had signed; among them were Sweden, the UK, Canada, Australia, and France. Notably, more than half of the coalition—including the United States, South Korea, Argentina, and the Maldives—did not sign.
The statement itself did not name the deceased journalists. Instead, it condemned the “deliberate targeting” of media workers and called for investigations into those responsible. Part of the delay, according to the internal correspondence, stemmed from wanting to accommodate “red lines” held by some member states and sticking to language that could achieve consensus, rather than directly referencing specific events, so as to issue something in a more timely fashion.
The article notes that this was the first time the Coalition had issued a statement calling out the killing of journalists in Gaza since the war began in October 2023. The broader context: media freedom groups report that nearly 200 media workers have been killed in Israeli operations in Gaza since then.
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