Doja Daoud
Doja Daoud became CPJ’s Levant program coordinator in March 2025 after serving as Middle East and North Africa representative from January 2024. Before joining CPJ as a correspondent in March 2022, Daoud worked for the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Araby al-Jadeed as a writer and news editor focusing on press freedom and media monitoring. She also contributed to Lebanese news outlets and co-founded Alternative Press Syndicate, a local union group for journalists. Follow her on LinkedIn.
‘Murder weapon’: Hunger ravages Gaza journalists under Israeli siege
After 19 months of war and Israel’s 11-week total blockade on food, water, fuel, cooking gas, medical supplies, and emergency aid into Gaza, hunger and famine threaten not just lives, but the media’s very ability to bear witness, six journalists told CPJ this month. Starvation, dizziness, brain fog, and sickness all directly affect the daily…
Q&A: Journalist Shrouq Al Aila on what cameras can’t show about the war in Gaza
Gaza journalists Shrouq Al Aila and Roshdi Sarraj were on a work trip in Saudi Arabia last fall when their home became a war zone. The married couple quickly returned to Gaza to report and to be with their community. But Sarraj, the founder of local production company Ain Media, would only manage to produce…
Iraqi Kurdish journalist Guhdar Zebari is free from prison, but not from threats
On February 17, 2024, Iraqi Kurdish journalist Guhdar Zebari was released from prison, concluding a three-and-a-half year legal saga that saw him convicted on anti-state and other charges in retaliation for his work. Zebari is one of the so-called “Badinan prisoners” – a group of journalists and activists from the ethnic Badinani group who were…
Gaza journalist Diaa Al-Kahlout describes 33 harrowing days in Israeli custody
Diaa Al-Kahlout, the veteran Gaza bureau chief for the Qatari-funded London-based newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, had been covering the Israel-Gaza war for two months when he became part of the news. On December 7, Al-Kahlout was detained along with members of his family by Israeli forces in a mass arrest in Beit Lahya in northern Gaza….
Arrests of Palestinian journalists since start of Israel-Gaza war
Since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, an unprecedented number of journalists and media workers have been arrested — often without charge — in what they and their attorneys say is retaliation for their journalism and commentary. As of November 12, 2025, CPJ has documented 94 arrests of journalists in the Palestinian territories of the…
Attacks, arrests, threats, censorship: The high risks of reporting during the Israel-Gaza war
Since the Israel-Gaza war began on October 7, 2023, journalists and news outlets across the region have faced a hostile environment that has made reporting on the war exceptionally challenging. In addition to documenting the growing tally of journalists killed and injured, CPJ’s research has found multiple kinds of incidents of journalists being targeted while…
‘When you stop writing, they win’: Exiled after attacks, Lebanese journalist Mariam Seif Eddine is still reporting
When a teenager’s burned body was discovered in Mariam Seif Eddine’s neighborhood in Beirut’s southern suburb in September 2020, the journalist knew she had to report the story, even if it meant crossing Hezbollah. The Shia political party and militant group likes to keep tight control on information coming out of its strongholds, she told CPJ. “Hezbollah…