Iran-Israel war: What tools are used to censor reporting?

Time of India

25-06-2025

AP image
Early into the second week of the war between Israel and Iran, accessing information about the conflict has become more difficult in several ways.
Last week, Iran first throttled internet speed and eventually shut down its internet.
Iran's government claimed Israeli drones were operating via SIM card internet connections and that the internet shutdown was necessary to limit Israel's ability to wage cyber warfare.
Consequently, websites, mobile apps and online messengers are inaccessible in Iran. That means news Iranians receive on the war, the death toll, destruction or this past weekend's US strikes comes solely from Iran's government and its state-led media.
Iranian authorities have also banned international media correspondents, such as dw journalists, from reporting on the conflict on the ground.
"My mother asked me to tell her what was happening," an Iranian man who lives in Germany and was able to call his mother in Tehran for a few minutes during the weekend told dw. He asked for his name not to be published for fear of reprisal.
"She had no idea which parts of Tehran were hit."
While obtaining news about the ongoing conflict from within Israel is possible, Israeli censor guidelines were updated last week. At the time of this publication, the discussion on a further tightening of the rules was ongoing. These guidelines are legally binding for local journalists and international correspondents.
The new regulations affect Tania Krämer, the head of dw's Jerusalem studio. "Until now, any footage of military installations or troops had to be approved by the military censor," she said from Jerusalem.
"Also, the faces of soldiers had to be blurred."
Such footage has to be submitted to the military censor prior to publication. "On average, [the military censor office] releases the videos quite quickly," she said.
Starting this week, rules have been updated. "Now it appears that we are not allowed to show live locations where missiles hit," Krämer said.
According to the Israeli newspaper
Haaretz
, Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Communication Minister Shlomo Karhi have issued new guidelines to the police allowing them to remove, or even arrest, journalists if they believe that media outlets are documenting sites or locations near them.
Israel's shrinking press freedom
"In Israel, all media outlets are compelled by law to submit any article or report related to security issues to the military censor," said Martin Roux, head of the Crisis Desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), an international NGO that defends press freedom, pluralism and the independence of journalism.
"However, media outlets are not allowed to disclose the intervention of the military censor to the public," he told DW.
He added that while this has been in practice for many years, censorship has increased since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7 2023.
"Members of the Israeli government have used aggressive rhetoric against media outlets reporting on these wars in a way that contravenes the official narrative," Roux said.
According to Haggai Matar, executive director of the independent Israeli online outlet
+972 Magazine
, Israel's military censors barred 1,635 articles from publication in 2024.
"This is the most extreme level of censorship since 2011," he wrote in a recent article on the website.
While he echoed Roux's view that this is driven by various conflicts in the region, the military censors have not disclosed official reasons.
The latest press freedom index by Reporters Without Borders ranked Israel at 112 of 180 countries in 2025. This is a drop by 11 ranks compared to 2024, following an earlier drop from 2023.
Further incidents, such as the ban of the Al Jazeera TV network, have increasingly curbed Israel's otherwise diverse media landscape. Al Jazeera TVwas taken off air in Israel in May 2024, and their Ramallah studio was closed due to a "threat to national security," according to the Israeli military. Israel alleged that an employee of the broadcaster was a commander of Hamas, which is widely categorized as terror organization.
Since then, Al Jazeera, financed by Qatar, which maintains ties with Hamas, is banned from reporting in Israel.
The state-funded Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation Kan also came under government pressure in 2024. Ministers had called for privatization, saying there was no need or room for public broadcasting. In early 2025, however, this decision was postponed.
In February, all of Israel's state-funded institutions had to sever ties with the country's established
Haaretz
newspaper after
Haaretz
publisher Amos Schocken criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government.
At the same time, pro-government outlets are increasingly being bankrolled, said
+972 Magazine
editor Matar.
And yet, the tech savvy Israeli population is able to access information across the internet. Also, all apps and messengers are working, including alerts on incoming rockets from Iran.
Israel also regularly announces online which areas in Tehran and other cities it plans to target. However, the internet clampdown in Iran has left people there largely unaware of these warnings.
Internet shutdown part of broader censorship
"Censorship has long been a central pillar of the Islamic regime's strategy to suppress dissenting voices," Damon Golriz, a strategic analyst at The Hague Institute for Geopolitics, told DW.
"social media is a crucial source of information for Iranians, but it also serves the regime as a powerful tool in its war on independent narratives through misinformation, disinformation and the repression of even anonymous users," Golriz said.
Amid the current internet shutdown, several prominent activists have been warned or arrested, and in one case, the family of a London-based Iranian journalist was harassed, he added.
For Mahtab Gholizadeh, an Iranian journalist based in Berlin, Iran's increased censorship goes beyond preventing Israeli cyber infiltration or keeping information about damage or the rising death toll from the population.
"It is fear of internal unrest," she told DW.
"The internet is a powerful catalyst for public mobilization, and the regime knows that in times of crisis, digital connectivity can serve as a spark for collective action against an authoritarian regime."
In her view, however, the internet clampdown won't last long.
"The Iranian regime knows that it will be unable to maintain a complete shutdown as technical and economic constraints will eventually force it to reconnect," she said, adding that this past weekend, a few selected journalists and loyal media were already granted access to what Iran calls the "white internet", Iran's state controlled internet.