Shireen Abu Akleh (veteran Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent; assassinated 11 May 2022) — her iconic journalistic creed from an Al Jazeera segment (confirmed via Arabi21): "I chose journalism to be close to the human being" — bearing witness and conveying the Palestinian story to the world.

اخترت الصحافة لأكون قريبة من الإنسان

[Source is Arabic (Arabi21, reproducing her words; the phrase is confirmed verbatim in the fetched page as a direct quote — "وهي التي قالت"). VERBATIM-DISCIPLINE NOTE: her FULLER creed — that she could not change reality but could at least convey people's voice to the world — is very widely attributed to her, but it renders in materially different Arabic wordings across outlets (some are back-translations from the New York Times' English: "قريبة من الناس / أصواتهم" vs the Al Jazeera-segment "قريبة من الإنسان / ذلك الصوت"), so to respect character-for-character accuracy ONLY the cleanly-confirmed core phrase is placed in content_original. published_date left NULL: the line comes from an Al Jazeera television segment of uncertain date — not fabricated.] English: "I chose journalism to be close to the human being [the people]." Declared creed of Shireen Abu Akleh (1971–2022) — the veteran Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent and one of the most recognized journalists in the Arab world, who covered the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for ~25 years and became, for a generation of Palestinians, the trusted voice of their story. Her journalistic philosophy — closeness to ordinary people, bearing witness, and conveying the Palestinian narrative to the world even when she could not change its reality — is captured in this iconic line. On 11 May 2022 she was shot dead while covering an Israeli military raid in Jenin, wearing a clearly marked PRESS vest; multiple investigations (including by the UN, and ultimately the US and Israel) concluded she was most likely killed by Israeli fire. Her killing — and the police assault on her funeral procession — made her a global symbol of PRESS FREEDOM and the dangers facing journalists in conflict zones. This is the PALESTINIAN PRESS-FREEDOM / bearing-witness pole — the role of journalism and media in the national struggle, a distinct civil-society dimension (a counterpart, in the press arena, to the human-rights documentarians Razan Zaitouneh and Mazen Darwish). [Axes: civil-liberties / press freedom (the role and protection of journalism; bearing witness), Palestinian national cause (conveying the people's narrative to the world), occupation-stance (chronicling life under occupation).]