Young female reporter working her way in Jerusalem
Nisaa FM: - The online portal "Qudscom" or "Your Jerusalem" is a young voice in Jerusalem's media landscape. Dunia Bader is one of the reporters on the front line and she also works on the editorial team.
The 21-year-old reports about and for young Palestinians in her city. About 70 percent of the population of Jerusalem is under the age of 18, but young people are barely represented in the media.
Qudscom's editorial office is just a few meters away from the Damascus Gate, which leads to Jerusalem's Old City. After Friday prayers, it's often the scene of clashes when Palestinians demonstrate against the presence of Israeli soldiers and for unimpeded access to the holy sites.
Dunia Bader has been assigned to do a story about imprisoned Palestinian minors. Among the demonstrators there are a lot of minors, who are being arrested by Israeli soldiers for throwing stones, among other things. The human rights organization B'Tselem estimates (figures from February 2016) that more than 400 young people are being held in Israeli military prisons.
Going to the demonstrations would be too dangerous for the journalism student. “In any case,” she says, “the Israeli soldiers would stop her from getting anywhere close”. So the young reporter has to find a different approach to gathering material for her story.
A journalist caught between two fronts
Qudscom has made it its mission to report on social, cultural or family-related topics that concern young people in Jerusalem. "I see it as my mission to give something back to my country by telling the world what's happening here," says the young reporter.
Perhaps inevitably, the politically charged situation in the Middle East also has an impact on the local media. The NGO 'Reporters Without Borders' ranks the Palestinian Territories 132nd out of180 countries on its World Press Freedom Index. Journalists here have to battle on a number of fronts.
On the one hand, Israeli security forces routinely try to prevent Palestinian reporters from doing their job, blocking their movements, seizing their material or simply arresting them. On the other hand, the Palestinian secret service watches them closely. If they criticize the government or report about corruption, they risk being arrested on charges of treason.
Does that call for a great deal of courage? The 21-year-old says that, “Above all, you have to be creative and think on your feet. A locked-up journalist is no good to anyone”.
So she decides to make her report, not about the arrests, but about young people who had been released from prison: Why were they arrested? How did their time in an Israeli prison change them? "This way, I can give the topic a personal face," says Dunia Bader, "and I can also manage to keep myself safe."
Source: www.dw.com