PROVIDENCE — More journalists have been killed in the war in Gaza than in the US Civil War, World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan combined, according to a newly-released report by the Costs of War project at Brown University.
Estimates show that between 147 and 232 journalists have been killed in Gaza since the beginning of the war on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas and several other Palestinian militant groups launched a coordinated attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people. By comparison, 67 journalists were killed during World War II.
“It is, quite simply, the worst ever conflict for reporters,” the report, which was released Tuesday, said.
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The Costs of War project, which launched in 2010 and is housed at Brown’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, has previously studied the budgetary and true human costs of wars in the decades after Sept. 11, 2001, as well as those resulting from US spending on Israel’s military operations.
Most reporters harmed or killed in these conflicts, including the war in Gaza, are often local journalists, according to the study’s authors. The world increasingly has relied on these often underpaid and under-resourced journalists to carry out the most dangerous coverage as the number of Western foreign correspondents dwindles.
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“This outsourcing of risk not only imperils the lives of local reporters, leaving them to stand alone in the face of extraordinary violence, but impairs news coverage and, as a result, the worldwide information ecosystem,” the report said.
Approximately 43,000 newspaper journalism jobs in the United States have disappeared since 2005, while more than 3,200 print newspapers have vanished, according to a 2024 report by Northwestern University. Many legacy news organizations have closed or merged with larger corporations. Others have reduced their coverage.
In the 1960s and 1970s, international coverage was a staple of network television news. In the 1980s, American TV networks each maintained about 15 foreign bureaus. By 2010, there were six or less, and only a single person (in Nairobi, Kenya for ABC) was located in Africa, India, or South America. As television bureaus abroad closed, the number of minutes American news networks devoted to international news plummeted.
The reduction of foreign correspondents has only made local reporters in war zones more essential, serving as the world’s eyes and ears, and seeking out verifiable information. Violence against war reporters is a threat to the global ecosystem, the report says.
Since fall 2023, Palestinian journalists in Gaza have faced malnutrition and a lack of clean drinking water, shelter, and electricity. Women journalists and other media workers, including translators, have faced online trolling, sexist hate speech, physical assault, rape, and even murder.
“Journalists, and journalism, are increasingly a casualty of war,” said Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War project. “Democracy and peace require a free press; militarism helps fuel rollbacks to democracy in more ways than one.”
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“Understanding the true costs of war lays the foundation for prioritizing human needs over the profits of the military industrial complex, and good reporting is key to this equation,” added Savell.
The Costs of War project is not alone in documenting how deadly the conflict in Gaza has been for journalists. In February, the Committee to Protect Journalists released a special report, that said 2024 was the deadliest year for journalists since the organization began collecting data more than three decades ago. Nearly two-thirds of the journalists and media workers killed in 2024 were Palestinians killed by Israel, according to the report.
“The war in Gaza is unprecedented in its impact on journalists and demonstrates a major deterioration in global norms on protecting journalists in conflict zones, but it is far from the only place journalists are in danger,” said Committee to Protect Journalists CEO Jodie Ginsberg. “Our figures show journalists under attack worldwide.”
Outside of Gaza, in 2024 journalists have been killed in Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan, Myanmar, Mozambique, India, Iraq, and Sudan. Freelancers, who typically report the news with the fewest resources, accounted for more than 35 percent of all killings, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Ginsberg said the rise of journalist killings is part of a broader trend of “muzzling the media globally.”
So far this year, Ginsberg said journalist killings have continued at a rapid pace. At least 15 journalists and media workers have been killed so far in 2025. Of those, the Committee to Protect Journalists says 10 were in Israel and the Gaza Strip.
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“This is an issue that should worry us all — because censorship prevents us from addressing corruption and criminality, and from holding the powerful to account," added Ginsberg.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.