📰 Breaking the Badge: Why Valerie Zink Resigned from Reuters Over Gaza Genocide

After eight years with Reuters, she shattered her press badge and exposed Western media’s role in enabling Israel’s war crimes against journalists.

Family, you will not see this story on CNN, in The New York Times, or even in Reuters itself. They are all complicit. They will not cover the journalists who finally take a stand against their own newsrooms’ betrayal. And yet, today, one woman’s act of courage deserves to be amplified everywhere.

After eight years as a Reuters photojournalist, Valerie Zink resigned this week. She didn’t just quit quietly. She broke her Reuters press badge in half, publicly renounced the organization, and accused her own newsroom of complicity in the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza.

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Breaking the Badge, Breaking the Silence

Valerie is not some fringe freelancer. For nearly a decade her photos appeared in Reuters, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, and countless other outlets across North America, Asia, and Europe. But she said she could no longer, in good conscience, wear a badge that had become a symbol of betrayal.

Her words were direct: Reuters, and the Western press at large, have become conveyor belts for Israeli propaganda — laundering lies, sanitizing war crimes, and enabling genocide.

In her resignation, Valerie did what almost no one in corporate journalism has had the courage to do: she put truth before career. She sacrificed her standing to honor the martyrs in Gaza — her colleagues, Palestinian journalists who have paid with their lives for the work she was still allowed to do.

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Valerie Zink’s Letter (Full Text)

Here is her resignation letter in full, without edits. These are her words, preserved for the record:

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For the past eight years I have worked as a stringer for Reuters news agency. My photos covering stories in the prairie provinces have been published by the New York Times, Al Jazeera, and other media outlets across North America, Asia, Europe, and elsewhere. At this point it’s become impossible for me to maintain a relationship with Reuters given its role in justifying and enabling the systematic assassination of 245 journalists in Gaza. I owe my colleagues in Palestine at least this much, and so much more.

When Israel murdered Anas Al-Sharif, together with the entire Al-Jazeera crew in Gaza City on August 10, Reuters chose to publish Israel’s entirely baseless claim that Al-Sharif was a Hamas operative – one of countless lies that media outlets like Reuters have dutifully repeated and dignified. Reuters’ willingness to perpetuate Israel’s propaganda has not spared their own reporters from Israel’s genocide. Five more journalists, including Reuters cameraman Hossam Al-Masri, were among 20 people killed this morning in another attack on Nasser hospital. It was what’s known as a “double tap” strike, in which Israel bombs a civilian target like a school or hospital; waits for medics, rescue teams, and journalists to arrive; and then strikes again.

Western media is directly culpable for creating the conditions in which this can happen. As Jeremy Scahill from Drop Site News put it, “every major outlet – from the New York Times to the Washington Post, from AP to Reuters – has served as a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda, sanitizing war crimes and dehumanizing victims, abandoning their colleagues and their alleged commitment to true and ethical reporting.”

By repeating Israel’s genocidal fabrications without determining if they have any credibility – willfully abandoning the most basic responsibility of journalism – Western media outlets have made possible the killing of more journalists in two years on one tiny strip of land than in WWI, WWII, and the wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, and Ukraine combined, to say nothing of starving an entire population, shredding its children, and burning people alive.

The fact that Anas Al-Sharif’s work won a Pulitzer Prize for Reuters did not compel them to come to his defence when Israeli occupation forces placed him on a “hit list” of journalists accused of being Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.

It did not compel them to come to his defence when he appealed to international media for protection after an Israeli military spokesperson posted a video making clear their intention to assassinate him following a report he did on the growing famine. It did not compel them to report on his death honestly when he was hunted and killed weeks later.

I have valued the work that I brought to Reuters over the past eight years, but at this point I can’t conceive of wearing this press pass with anything but deep shame and grief. I don’t know what it means to begin to honour the courage and sacrifice of journalists in Gaza – the bravest and best to ever live – but going forward I will direct whatever contributions I have to offer with that front of mind.

— Valerie Zink

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An Indictment of Western Media

Valerie’s words cut to the core: Western media is not just biased — it is complicit.

She is right. Israel has now killed over 273 journalists in Gaza since October 2023, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. This is the deadliest war for reporters in modern history. And yet, instead of defending their colleagues, Western outlets like Reuters, AP, The Washington Post, and The New York Times have parroted Israeli talking points. They have published unverified claims, dismissed evidence of war crimes, and minimized atrocities.

The result? An environment where journalists are deliberately targeted, hospitals are bombed, and the truth is buried under propaganda. Valerie says it plainly: the mainstream press has abandoned even the most basic responsibility of journalism.

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International Law and War Crimes

Let’s be clear: deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions. Striking a hospital — and then striking again to kill the rescuers — compounds the crime.

Israel has done both, repeatedly. And it has done so with U.S. weapons.

Biden oversaw this horror for a full year, defending Israel’s every strike, every massacre. Now Trump has taken the reins and is continuing the exact same policy — flooding Israel with bombs, shielding it at the United Nations, and protecting its leaders from accountability.

This is not just Israel’s crime. It is America’s crime. Our leaders, past and present, are guilty.

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Courage in the Face of Silence

Valerie Zink’s resignation is not just about her conscience. It is about breaking the silence that has enabled genocide. She understood that her press badge had become a symbol not of journalism, but of complicity. And so she broke it.

That act matters. Because it tells every journalist who has swallowed their doubts, every editor who has looked away, every newsroom that has bowed to pressure: you can choose truth. You can refuse complicity. You can walk away.

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Family, you won’t read Valerie’s story in Reuters. You won’t see it covered by CNN, the Times, or the Post. They are all complicit. That’s why I need you here — because together, we will amplify the stories the powerful refuse to tell. Please become a paid subscriber today so we can keep exposing these truths.

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Love and appreciate each of you.
Your friend and brother,
Shaun

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