{"id":175708,"date":"2025-04-07T14:53:59","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T14:53:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/activist\/plestia-alaqad-interview-journalists-should-humanise-people\/"},"modified":"2025-04-07T14:53:59","modified_gmt":"2025-04-07T14:53:59","slug":"plestia-alaqad-interview-journalists-should-humanise-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=175708","title":{"rendered":"Plestia Alaqad interview: \u201cJournalists should humanise people\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<br \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.tcocdn.com\/tco\/images\/Huck\/Huck_QA_Newsletter_April_2025_Hero_V1.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>Can you talk about the writing processes for the book?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">I started writing my diary entries when I was in Gaza. I didn\u2019t have my original diary with me. It was a random, ugly blue notebook that I was writing in. I didn\u2019t really like how it looked, but it was all I could find and I was grateful for it. I started writing with it in different places \u2013 in the car, on the sidewalks of the street \u2013 writing, writing, writing. Sometimes I used to write about my day before trying to sleep at night, sometimes I\u2019d write in the morning because I didn\u2019t want anyone around me to talk to me, and they\u2019d see me busy writing.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The first 45 days were obviously in Gaza, then the aftermath chapter I wrote when I was in Australia, and I wrote when I was in Egypt as well. So I wrote in different places and when we started turning the diary entries into a book, it was professionally edited \u2013 going back and forth on a Microsoft Word document.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>I think what I connected with the most reading the book was how you really show that people aren\u2019t statistics \u2013 of course the official death toll <\/strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2025\/3\/23\/israeli-offensive-in-gaza-has-killed-50000-palestinians-since-october-2023\"><strong>hit 50,000<\/strong><\/a><strong> the other day.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">The death tally is more than 50,000. [There was a Lancet] <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/news\/2024\/7\/8\/gaza-toll-could-exceed-186000-lancet-study-says\">study<\/a> months ago that said that it\u2019s actually more than 185,000. 50,000 is not an up-to-date number, because when you think about it, the people who are supposed to tell you how many people are being killed, are also getting killed.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\"><strong>I think it shows a forward thinking, modern way to do journalism. Should journalists learn from the ways that you\u2019ve been telling stories?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">Yes, there is a lot [other journalists] could learn. First of all, to focus on humanising people and not on surface level reporting. I appreciate all journalists \u2013 I\u2019m only 23 years old and when I was reporting [in Gaza], I was only 20, 21. I don\u2019t have a lot of experience \u2013 they obviously have experience and I appreciate that, but sometimes I believe that it\u2019s a good thing I don\u2019t, because I\u2019m not following someone else\u2019s work or path. I\u2019m doing things the way I believe that they should be done, because sometimes journalists follow what\u2019s in the book and don\u2019t actually dig deep to understand the person they\u2019re working on [for] their story, or to understand the importance of what they\u2019re reporting on.<\/p>\n<p dir=\"ltr\">If a story goes viral, not all journalists should report on it just because it\u2019s viral. There are a lot of untold stories that could go viral, but they\u2019re unreported on. So focus on reporting that. Choose your stories wisely, ask your questions wisely, and ask yourself: \u201cWhat\u2019s the purpose of what I\u2019m doing?\u201d Because if you know the purpose and value of what you\u2019re doing, you\u2019ll do your job better. If you\u2019re doing what you\u2019re doing only for your story to go viral, or for such intentions, then you wouldn\u2019t cover the story as it should be reported.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Can you talk about the writing processes for the book? I started writing my diary entries when I was in Gaza. I didn\u2019t have my original diary with me. It was a random, ugly blue notebook that I was writing in. I didn\u2019t really like how it looked, but it was all I could find [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":175709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12022],"tags":[22085,70005,3685,48116,15586,70002,14006,27553,70006,70003,5727,49077,24310,5532,4517,3794,70004,4355,8661,16924],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-175708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-activist","tag-aftermath","tag-alaqad","tag-author","tag-award-winning","tag-crucial","tag-followed","tag-gaza","tag-having","tag-humanise","tag-inside","tag-interview","tag-journalist","tag-journalists","tag-memoir","tag-october","tag-people","tag-plestia","tag-releasing","tag-the","tag-voices"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Plestia Alaqad interview: \u201cJournalists should humanise people\u201d - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=175708\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Plestia Alaqad interview: \u201cJournalists should humanise people\u201d - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can you talk about the writing processes for the book? I started writing my diary entries when I was in Gaza. I didn\u2019t have my original diary with me. It was a random, ugly blue notebook that I was writing in. 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