Three readers just put $45,000 behind our Gaza coverageEvery dollar goes directly to the Palestinian journalists reporting from the ground in Gaza
Over the past few weeks, three Drop Site readers came to us independently with the same idea. They wanted to know one thing: if they committed real money to our Gaza reporting, would our community match it. Together, they’ve pledged $45,000 to fund and expand our reporting on the ground in Gaza and our investigations into Israel’s ongoing assault on the Palestinian people. That reporting is done by Palestinian journalists and correspondents who have kept working through two years of a genocide that has killed more of their colleagues than any conflict in modern history. It was a significant investment they wanted to see doubled by the community that believes in and depends on this reporting. That money only turns into support for the brave journalists actually doing this work if the rest of us meet them there. Here’s the deal: if we raise $45,000 from readers like you, every one of those dollars gets matched, we’ll have $90,000 dedicated entirely to our Gaza coverage. Your $25 becomes $50. Your $50 becomes $100. Your $100 becomes $200. Here’s why this matters right nowFor two years, Western outlets have taken Israel’s unverified claims, that a murdered journalist was secretly a militant, that a strike on a hospital or a refugee camp was justified, and repeated them as fact, giving Israel’s military the space to launder each atrocity into something defensible. Legacy media never covered this story honestly. Now it isn’t even covering it at all. One analysis of US news coverage found that mentions of Gaza across major outlets fell to just 1.5% of their coverage in the months after the supposed “ceasefire,” less than two-thirds of what it was before the agreement, and the lowest sustained level of coverage since October 2023. The same newsrooms that laundered this genocide for two years have simply moved on from it, the moment Trump declared the story finished. It isn’t finished. Israel has killed more than 1,280 Palestinians since that so-called “ceasefire” began, including over 300 children. Homes are still being seized and demolished in the West Bank. Settlers are murdering Palestinians in broad daylight, under military protection, while cancer patients in Gaza die at two to three times the prewar rate because the hospitals that could treat them were targeted and destroyed. The gap between what corporate media launders or flatly ignores and what actually is happening, is the reason Drop Site exists. Right now, you have the opportunity to help close that gap. Will you help us turn $45,000 into $90,000 to directly fund our Gaza reporting? Our promiseTwo years ago, we launched this newsroom because we watched outlet after outlet either look away from what was happening in Gaza or sanitize it beyond recognition. We made a promise when we started: we would cover this with the depth, consistency, and honesty it demands, for as long as it takes, without asking permission from advertisers, foundations, or anyone else who might prefer we look away too. Here’s what that promise actually looks like in practice: our reporting you read from inside Gaza is done by Palestinian journalists who live there, who have kept working and kept documenting through two years of a genocide that has killed more of their colleagues than any conflict in modern history. That is one of the most heroic acts of journalism in history, done under conditions almost no one reading (or writing) this could imagine. A significant share of our budget goes directly to paying these journalists and correspondents for that work. When you give to this campaign, you are funding the people risking everything, every day, to make sure this story doesn’t disappear. $90,000 dedicated specifically to this work would let us do more of it, and do it faster: more support for the Palestinian journalists and correspondents already doing this reporting on the ground, more capacity to verify what’s happening as the media blackout deepens, more resources for the people risking everything to get us the truth. This is reader-funded journalism, which means this is on usWe don’t have a billionaire owner who can write a $90,000 check and call it done. We’re funded by readers who decide, one gift at a time, that this coverage is worth keeping alive. That takes more work than cashing a corporate check, but it also means nobody can pull our funding because they didn’t like a headline. Nobody can influence or shape our coverage or what or who we report on. We answer to you and nobody else. Three generous supporters already stepped up in a big way. Now we need the rest of the community to meet them, not with one huge gift, but with thousands of readers giving what they can. Every gift gets matched dollar for dollar until we hit $45,000, and every dollar of it goes directly to our Gaza reporting, which means it goes directly to the Palestinian journalists doing that reporting. We built Drop Site because the public deserved better than a media industry that has been complicit in the dehumanization of Palestinians and served as a conveyor belt for Israeli propaganda instead of the truth. Help us prove that promise still means something. Thank you for being here, and for making this kind of journalism possible. Jeremy, Ryan and the Drop Site team Every gift to Drop Site News is tax-deductible. This campaign runs until August 24th or until we hit our $45,000 match goal, whichever comes first.
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