Media Bias, Gaza and the Search for Radical Empathy | Karishma Patel

What happens when a journalist follows their conscience all the way out of the BBC? Karishma Patel spent months covering Gaza as a BBC Middle East specialist. She pitched the story of Hind Rajab, the six-year-old Palestinian girl who called the Red Crescent for help from a car surrounded by her dead family... and yet Karishma was told she was too emotionally attached to the story. She talks about the gap between impartiality and truth, why she left, and how music has been the thread running through all of it: from a piano piece she composed during the genocide to Elgar on long walks in the English countryside. Karishma Patel is also an ambassador for Amnesty UK's Defend Dissent campaign (protecting the right to protest at British universities), works with the Britain Palestine Media Centre, and is currently writing a book critiquing the concept of impartiality in journalism. She is published in Cultures of London: Legacies of Migration (Bloomsbury, 2024), was shortlisted for the #Merky Books New Writers' Prize in 2022, and holds an MPhil in English Literature from the University of Cambridge. She is also a classically trained pianist and opera singer. 🎵 Song choice: Sospiri by Edward Elgar Find Karishma: https://www.instagram.com/karishmapatel1/ | https://x.com/karishmapatel99 Sounds Like Change: https://linktr.ee/soundslikechange About the host: Ariana Alexander-Sefre has spent over a decade working at the intersection of music and social justice. An Iranian-British social innovator, she is the founder of SPOKE, a TEDx speaker, and an SXSW Innovation Award winner. A Drowned in Sound Network production. Edited by Tell Studio (tell.studio).