Almudena Ariza defends RTVE's coverage of the Gaza war
The Jerusalem correspondent has responded to criticism she has received on social media.
BarcelonaJournalist Almudena Ariza, currently TVE's correspondent in Jerusalem, has defended her coverage of the Gaza war after receiving several criticisms on social media. Some of this criticism was made by Joan Maria Piqué, who was head of communications for the Interior Ministry during Miquel Buch's administration and was later linked to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Transparency. Piqué, in a tweet on social media, questioned Ariza's impartiality and called for her replacement as correspondent.
"You are sent there and paid with public funds to explain the truth, not your activist speeches. You have taken sides with one of the two sides and that makes you unfit as a journalist. You are not in a position to offer an impartial account. Totally out of place," Piqué wrote in her post. The journalist responded to the criticism on her profile: "I cannot remain neutral in the face of the massacre of civilians. No honest journalist should be. That is activism, it is professional ethics. Reporting on crimes and civil suffering is an obligation, not an option. And that's precisely what a public service journalist should do."
Ariza, who was also a correspondent in Beijing, Paris, and New York, later denounced Piqué's tweet as political pressure. "A man with 17 years in political and institutional communications and at the forefront of Catalan politics, with weight and influence, has decided to publicly point me out and ask for my dismissal, tagging my bosses and the RTVE Board. I will continue doing my job: reporting rigorously on war crimes in Gaza and human rights violations." the journalist. Despite the criticism, the RTVE correspondent has continued to report on the situation in Gaza, both through public news programs and through her profile on X.
Since the war in Gaza began, Ariza has had to face criticism and accusations. At the end of May, she published on X: "They call me a jihadist correspondent. This is said by a subsidized media outlet that discredits and insults those of us who report on Gaza. Here in Israel, where I live and work, these kinds of accusations aren't harmless. They point a finger. They put people at risk. Criticizing Israel isn't supporting Hamas. It's a trap.
