Phase 01, Issue 02

“I’m Still Alive.” – Survival as Journalism

There is something deeply unsettling about hearing someone begin a video with the words:

“I’m still alive.”

That was how Bisan Owda updated the world.

Bisan Owda is a Palestinian journalist and filmmaker from Gaza whose videos became some of the most recognized firsthand documentation following the escalation of Israel’s after October 7th 2023. While much of the world followed the situation through headlines and breaking news updates, Bisan captured the human reality of living through war as it unfolded.

Families displaced from Gaza City.
People moving between Khan Younis and Rafah searching for safety.
Hospitals struggling to function as infrastructure collapsed around them.

And through all of it, she continued filming.

What made Bisan’s journalism resonate with so many people was the honesty behind it. Her videos carried exhaustion, fear, grief, and uncertainty in a way that felt impossible to fake. There was no distance between the journalist and the story because she was living through the very reality she was documenting.

One of her most shared quotes was:

“We are not numbers. We are people.”

That sentence struck a chord because it reminded the world that wars are more than political debates or casualty counts. They are lived experiences affecting ordinary people in unimaginable ways.

Bisan documented displacement, internet blackouts, shortages of food and electricity, and the emotional exhaustion of surviving under continuous bombardment. Even uploading a video became difficult at times, yet she continued documenting events so the outside world could witness the experiences of people caught in the middle of war.

That quiet persistence is what made her work so impactful.

Her journalism later gained international recognition, including an Emmy Award in 2024 for the documentary It’s Bisan from Gaza and I’m Still Alive, which documented life in Gaza during the war, but what made Bisan Owda truly important was the way she humanized a crisis that many understood only through brief updates online.

Her work reminded people that suffering does not become less important simply because it is happening far away from us. Journalism has the power to connect people to realities beyond their own lives, and journalists like Bisan Owda help ensure that these stories are seen, remembered, and understood with humanity.

And maybe that is the question her work leaves behind:

If journalists are risking their lives to make sure the world sees the truth, what does it say about us when we still choose to look away?

Penned By:

Rtr. Akeedha Ramzan

Editorial Committee Member 25.26