The kidnapped BBC reporter Alan Johnston is alive and well a month after he was kidnapped in Gaza, according to information received by the Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Mark Thompson, the corporation’s Director General, speaking in the West Bank town of Ramallah this morning, said that Mr Abbas had assured him the case had been made “a very high priority indeed”, and that trusted sources suggested the journalist was in good health.

Mr Thompson began a day of co-ordinated events to raise awareness of Johnston’s ordeal by appealing for the release of the reporter, who was taken at gunpoint as he drove to home from his office in Gaza City on March 12.

Johnston’s father, Graham, read an open letter this morning, expressing the family’s fears, but urging, “Chin up, my son”.

He pleaded with the kidnappers for his son’s release: “You have families, please think about what this is doing to my family. As I have said before, please, let my son go, now, today.”

Johnston, 44, was the BBC correspondent in Gaza for three years and was entering the final few weeks of his posting when he was kidnapped.

“Quite apart from the humanitarian issues of the enormous anxiety that Alan himself is going through and the enormous burden being placed on his family and friends, it’s absolutely in the interests of the people of Gaza and of Palestine as a whole that he should be released immediately and unharmed,” Mr Thompson said.

He admitted the BBC was increasingly concerned that the abduction had lasted a month, as most similar hostage situations in Occupied Territories have been resolved in less than a week.

Two hundred Palestinian journalists continued their protest in Gaza today, holding posters reading “Free Alan”. The journalists have been campaigning for the Palestinian Authority to do more to resolve the crisis since Johnston’s kidnapping.

The director of BBC news, Helen Boaden, said that given the security issues, the corporation may not appoint another correspondent to be permanently stationed in Gaza City. “We’re likely to have someone who moves between Ramallah and Gaza,” she said.

At 2.30pm today the BBC, Sky and Al-Jazeera simultaneously broadcast a programme charting the events since Johnson’s disappearance and the difficulties of reporting from Gaza.

Richard Porter, head of news at BBC World, said: “We don’t think this has ever happened before - but all the broadcasters involved share a common aim to highlight Alan’s case and to remind viewers of the dangers faced by their news teams more frequently than ever.”

A Palestinian cameraman, Shams Odeh, who has worked in Gaza for more than 20 years told the programme that journalists face greater risks than ever. “Our life was in danger sometimes, but the rules of the game have changed now,” he said. “Kidnapping foreign journalists is not good for the Palestinian people.”

More than a dozen foreign journalists and aid workers have been abducted in Gaza in the last year and a half.

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