Juno News - CBC deliberately whitewashes Hamas terrorism

00:00:00.000 My friend Avi Yamini, who is a contributor to Rebel News, just landed in Israel.

00:00:14.360 He's going to be covering, doing some reporting from the ground.

00:00:17.480 And one of the things that he noted in his video I saw was that he was expecting to get

00:00:21.720 on an empty plane, going to Tel Aviv from wherever he was flying.

00:00:25.760 But in fact, he got on a plane that was full because people want to be with their families.

00:00:31.460 They want to be in the country that matters a great deal to them.

00:00:34.060 And there is a bit of inspiration we can all take from that.

00:00:37.440 Now, of course, none of that is apparent in the Canadian media coverage or much of the

00:00:42.300 Western media coverage, for example.

00:00:44.640 CBC, you may have seen, had sent a memo out to its journalists urging them to not call

00:00:50.560 Hamas a terror organization, to not refer to Hamas as a terror group.

00:00:56.940 Now, let me say there are a number of things in journalism that you have to include both

00:01:01.860 sides of.

00:01:02.960 Hamas is, as a matter of fact and a matter of law in Canada, a terrorist entity.

00:01:09.000 This is something that is a longstanding and really uncontested designation as a list of

00:01:16.080 terror organizations in Canada that includes Hamas.

00:01:18.920 But to CBC, you cannot call them that.

00:01:21.860 You're also not supposed to reference the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza by Israel, which took place

00:01:28.020 in 2005, nearly 20 years ago.

00:01:30.820 So any claim that Israel is occupying Gaza is simply untrue.

00:01:35.820 But you're not going to see that reflected in CBC coverage.

00:01:39.720 This memo sent out by the editorial standards director for the public broadcaster is one of

00:01:44.900 the more explicit examples of this bias against Israel in its reporting of the Middle East,

00:01:51.600 but by no means exclusively so, which is why Mike Fagelman always has his work cut out for

00:01:56.660 him.

00:01:56.800 He is the executive director of Honest Reporting Canada, which tries to keep the media responsible

00:02:02.340 on this issue.

00:02:03.420 And he joins me now.

00:02:04.600 Mike, it's good to talk to you again.

00:02:06.060 Thanks for coming on today.

00:02:07.840 Thanks for having me on your program, Andrew.

00:02:09.260 So this CBC memo, which I'm very grateful was leaked because it allows us to see very

00:02:14.920 explicitly the marching orders that are being given.

00:02:17.880 But I'm guessing you just from reading coverage that CBC has published could probably have

00:02:23.020 indicated this was either an internalized bias or a matter of policy in their coverage already,

00:02:29.480 right?

00:02:30.400 Well, it's a systemic issue where a public broadcaster, again, taxpayer dollars, refuses

00:02:35.140 to call terror by its name.

00:02:36.860 Andrew, as you point out, the Canadian government deems that Hamas is a terrorist organization.

00:02:42.780 This isn't subjective.

00:02:43.860 This is a matter of fact.

00:02:45.380 But our public broadcaster is instructing its journalists to bend over backwards to sanitize

00:02:50.000 terror and not call it for what it really needs to be called.

00:02:53.480 The second component is in terms of not regarding Israel's pullout, disengagement from Gaza.

00:03:00.440 They're basically saying, no, this is really effectively still an occupation.

00:03:03.960 Israel controls the land, sea and air, whereas in reality, you know, up until a couple of 0.50

00:03:09.320 days ago when Hamas had kidnapped about 100 plus people, there were no Israelis in Gaza,

00:03:14.520 not settlers, not soldiers.

00:03:15.960 This is what's actually happening on ground.

00:03:17.700 So when when you ask, you know, is our public broadcaster, is there an inherent bias?

00:03:22.880 This is very clear.

00:03:25.020 Well, we also have seen some reporters in the past push back against what they believe is

00:03:32.220 a too pro-Israel bias that exists in the media.

00:03:35.140 I know a couple of years ago there was this bizarre open letter that was being signed in

00:03:39.200 which you had activist journalists saying that outlets should actually adopt the activist

00:03:43.940 language.

00:03:44.400 They should call it an occupation. 0.99

00:03:45.820 They should call it illegal.

00:03:47.120 They should accuse Israel of war crimes. 0.86

00:03:49.120 And that was revealing of the sensibility of where a lot of individual reporters in Canada

00:03:54.200 lie on this issue.

00:03:55.880 Yeah.

00:03:56.060 And I think I think certainly in the past couple of years, we've noticed there's a shift in

00:03:59.700 journalism where a lot of journalists who are tasked to be politically neutral and objective

00:04:04.120 are shifting into becoming activists, even though they're under the payroll of either our public

00:04:09.020 broadcaster or other media outlets.

00:04:10.560 We're flagging journalists who constantly inserting their personal opinion and personal political

00:04:15.820 views into their coverage that makes it jaundiced, that makes it slanted, and that fits their

00:04:20.680 own political narrow viewpoint.

00:04:22.640 It is very alarming.

00:04:25.040 Yeah.

00:04:25.680 And I just to go back to this memo from CBC here, they say, please make sure you don't

00:04:31.580 use loaded language.

00:04:33.320 And it goes on in that same paragraph.

00:04:35.860 Everything we say and write publicly as CBC journalists can be seen as part of our coverage

00:04:39.960 and should be fact based.

00:04:41.780 So we go back to the Hamas designation.

00:04:43.620 The fact that Hamas is a registered and designated terrorist group in Canada is a fact.

00:04:49.220 So by not including that, they're undermining what they say is a commitment to, you know,

00:04:54.140 the old just the facts, ma'am line.

00:04:56.300 Yeah, they need to call a spade a spade.

00:04:58.880 Public Safety Canada, our government deems Hamas, I think it was 20 years ago, I think

00:05:03.180 it was over 20 years ago, declared Hamas a terror group, but they refuse to call it as

00:05:07.940 such.

00:05:08.320 There's also hypocrisy in the CBC's coverage of whether it's the Air India bombing.

00:05:13.780 They have no problem appropriating the term and its variants, terror, terrorism, terrorist.

00:05:19.720 But not as it relates to Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group, not as it relates to ISIS even,

00:05:25.820 Al-Qaeda, Hamas. 0.80

00:05:27.980 No.

00:05:28.260 They prefer to use language like fighter, insurgents, militants, the most sanitized language you

00:05:34.680 could possibly imagine.

00:05:35.640 Imagine you're a reader, a listener, a viewer.

00:05:38.240 You can't really tell who these people actually are.

00:05:41.640 You know, in some respect, it almost comes off like their actions are legitimate when

00:05:46.100 they're whitewashed in such a horrible way.

00:05:47.940 One of the things that I've always found so difficult about this issue is that you are

00:05:54.540 having to deal with seven decades, I mean, you're dealing with millennia of history, but

00:05:58.880 if you're just talking about the state of Israel, you're dealing with, you know, seven 0.97

00:06:01.940 plus decades of history, which if you've not been following it on the ins and outs, and

00:06:05.880 even if you have been, it's very difficult to condense into a few sentences of background

00:06:10.440 in a story.

00:06:11.280 And as a result, a lot of misinformation tends to be disseminated very easily.

00:06:16.000 And I mean, one, and I know you're well aware of this, people may have seen this map that

00:06:20.400 or it's a series of maps that purports to show, you know, Israeli land grabs from Palestinians.

00:06:25.740 And it's probably one of the most easily debunked and historically inaccurate maps.

00:06:29.780 But you see this held up on signs.

00:06:32.100 You see media outlets in some cases referencing it.

00:06:34.780 The New York Times a few years back did this.

00:06:37.440 And like, do you think this is an example of, in most cases, incompetence or bias?

00:06:43.160 Like, do you think it's just journalists that don't know history, that don't know geopolitics,

00:06:46.640 that are just being fed information from faulty sources?

00:06:49.980 Or do you think it is that pushing an agenda?

00:06:53.160 Yeah, I don't think they're mutually exclusive.

00:06:55.620 I do think it is a healthy combination of both.

00:06:58.060 I think there are certainly some journalists where there is an element of malice, where there's

00:07:02.740 an intention to malign and to mislead.

00:07:04.840 And then I think there's like, you know, lots of people, there's no shortage of ignorance

00:07:08.480 and naivete who accept the slanted political views and falsehoods as being conventional

00:07:15.680 wisdom when they're not and are willing instead of doing their due diligence and fact checking

00:07:20.000 and confirming the veracity of, you know, simple information that you can find with the

00:07:25.140 click of a button on Google, they refuse to do so.

00:07:27.740 Or maybe there's the lack of editorial vigor and due diligence.

00:07:30.860 In any event, the resulting effect is that people are misled.

00:07:34.800 And this fundamentally changes paradigms about Israel, the Middle East, Canadian attitudes,

00:07:39.380 Canadian foreign policy.

00:07:40.940 It's debilitating.

00:07:43.460 One of the things that I am always encouraged by is that you do seem to get traction when

00:07:48.500 you raise these issues from a lot of media outlets.

00:07:50.860 They'll issue corrections, they'll change reporting.

00:07:53.700 And I'm wondering if that's happening more or less frequency.

00:07:56.420 Are you finding it's harder to get those corrections and concessions when you point out these issues?

00:08:03.280 It's a mixed bag and it's always going to be case by case there.

00:08:05.980 We have felt that we found that, you know, there are certain media outlets were more amenable

00:08:10.300 to professional dialogues.

00:08:11.800 And then there are others who, quite frankly, are obtuse.

00:08:15.140 And I'll be honest, provide a bit of a window dressing of journalistic accountability.

00:08:19.320 I think, you know, referencing the CBC, it's a perfect example where a public broadcaster

00:08:24.360 is far too often reluctant to atone for journalistic transgressions.

00:08:30.020 Other media outlets we found are open to a dialogue.

00:08:34.260 It's, you know, it's a systemic issue, though.

00:08:36.860 Yeah, and just to use CBC as an example, one of the things that has happened with them

00:08:43.540 is, oh, I'm talking to myself now.

00:08:45.800 I believe we have lost Mike, so we'll have to get Mike back here in just a moment.

00:08:50.420 But I should say, I mean, the CBC example, it was a leaked memo.

00:08:54.060 Yes, it was a memo that was published, that was disseminated, and that was reported on.

00:09:00.240 And at first, there were people saying, oh, we don't know if this is true or not.

00:09:03.400 When asked for comment, CBC completely owned up to it.

00:09:08.240 They completely bought the fact that, like, yeah, this is what we believe.

00:09:12.220 This is who we are, and we stand by it.

00:09:14.460 So CBC is a great example here, where as a matter of policy,

00:09:19.280 they are choosing to take a very biased anti-Israel view,

00:09:24.600 which is to say that we are going to whitewash the terrorism of Hamas.

00:09:30.120 And that's the thing.

00:09:31.420 And when I mentioned yesterday on the show, and I'll repeat it for those who missed it,

00:09:35.100 or I'll say it louder for those at the back.

00:09:37.040 You cannot both sides, a conflict in which one side is a terrorist group attacking civilians.

00:09:43.380 You cannot just talk about this as though there are two belligerents in a conflict,

00:09:47.620 like some state-on-state war.

00:09:49.940 This is a case where you have a terrorist insurgent group that is attacking Israeli civilians,

00:09:56.480 attacking children, seniors, women, doesn't matter, and doing absolutely brutal things to them.

00:10:03.000 And by the way, I will mention one of the challenges yesterday.

00:10:07.360 I had acknowledged that there had been this report from I-24, an Israeli reporter,

00:10:12.220 in which she quoted IDF soldiers as saying they had seen evidence of babies being beheaded.

00:10:17.840 This has become just an absolute, like, brutal debate online about,

00:10:24.960 oh, well, did it actually happen?

00:10:26.600 And her only evidence is what IDF said.

00:10:29.120 And I qualified that on the show.

00:10:30.640 But I said, look, I've seen photos that suggest this stuff has gone on.

00:10:35.940 And, you know, look, I would love for it to not be true.

00:10:38.600 I would absolutely love for no infants to have gone through what that reporter,

00:10:43.100 and what the soldiers with whom she spoke described happening.

00:10:47.040 But the reality is it is entirely plausible.

00:10:50.740 It has the ring of truth.

00:10:51.860 Like anything in a conflict, you have to verify and avoid the tendency to just buy into memes,

00:10:59.040 buy in information which is traveling at breakneck speeds and can't be verified.

00:11:03.560 But it's something that I think it's interesting how many people are trying so hard to say it's not true definitively.

00:11:11.100 Because they know how difficult it will be for them to keep up the narrative and rhetoric they're keeping up,

00:11:18.160 which is whitewashing Hamas' crimes, if, in fact, this ends up becoming even more verified than it is.

00:11:24.460 And I'll ask you about that, Mike.

00:11:26.380 We have Mike Fegelman back from Honest Reporting Canada.

00:11:28.900 I mean, obviously, information's coming at breakneck speeds.

00:11:32.780 Media outlets, I believe, do have an important role in sharing both sides of the conflict here.

00:11:37.600 And if there are people in Canada that are rallying because they oppose Israel,

00:11:41.400 I think their voices should be included for context.

00:11:44.980 Where do you draw the line, though?

00:11:46.420 Because I know you've raised criticism about the platforming of some of these people.

00:11:50.800 We draw the line when individuals are given a platform to justify terrorism.

00:11:55.180 And listen, if it's a live interview and something is said that, you know, 0.90

00:11:59.180 whether it's calling for Jews to be decapitated, 0.58

00:12:02.500 you know, you've got to call that out. 0.99

00:12:04.780 You've got to say this is just abhorrent.

00:12:07.360 What we're seeing far too often are column inches, reporting, airtime given to people who are saying,

00:12:13.920 look, it's because of the settlements, because of the so-called occupation of Gaza,

00:12:18.000 that this is what brought upon Hamas to come in, murder 1,200 people, decapitate babies, burn whole families alive. 0.82

00:12:25.120 It's just morally repugnant. 0.93

00:12:28.760 It's utter depravity.

00:12:31.240 And it's shocking that journalists just accept all these kind of claims at face value

00:12:36.180 instead of just simply asking, you know,

00:12:38.740 Hamas calls for Israel's destruction and the Jewish people to be on the receiving end of a genocide for or against.

00:12:46.280 It's a simple question.

00:12:48.400 Nobody's asking it.

00:12:49.540 How is that possible?

00:12:50.460 Yeah, and I mentioned, I don't know if you heard it because it was when we were having the connection issues,

00:12:56.100 but, you know, this is not an example of someone inadvertently using a loaded word

00:12:59.680 or someone who accidentally uses something, which, you know, for example,

00:13:03.560 I didn't have a lot of experience when I started out in media writing about Indigenous issues.

00:13:07.800 So there were times when I would accidentally use the wrong term for something

00:13:11.540 and someone would say, hey, Andrew, this is what you should do.

00:13:13.560 And you correct it and you move on.

00:13:15.000 We're not talking about, in CBC's case, an example of that because they literally laid out their policy in writing for us to see.

00:13:23.220 Exactly.

00:13:23.980 And look, there are people that they interview who use, you know, lexicon like resistance.

00:13:29.140 You know, Palestinians are entitled to resistance. 1.00

00:13:31.780 Resistance, that's a euphemism for terror.

00:13:34.220 It's a euphemism for suicide bombings.

00:13:36.400 And I saw a report a couple of minutes ago in the past, Andrew, in the past 10 minutes,

00:13:40.860 you know, I think there's a dozen Hezbollah Paraglai terrorists who are trying to go into Israel and attack.

00:13:46.980 And are we going to see people saying, oh, well, that's legitimate, it's justifiable.

00:13:51.220 Look, they're trying to end the occupation now.

00:13:54.500 And that's the, you know, the statement some people are making are, look, it's been 75 years of occupation, 75 years.

00:14:00.600 What you're actually saying is that Israel fundamentally has no right to exist. 0.67

00:14:04.600 But, you know, our journalists are not pushing back against these claims.

00:14:07.900 They're accepting it at face value, perhaps because they're willing and agreeable. 0.99

00:14:13.520 Other times they're ignorant. 0.97

00:14:14.900 Either way, it's unacceptable.

00:14:16.980 Well, I know you are doing a great job keeping them honest, as your name suggests.

00:14:21.120 Honest Reporting Canada, Mike Fagelman.

00:14:23.100 Thank you so much for coming on, Mike.

00:14:24.840 My pleasure, Andrew.

00:14:25.500 Thank you.

00:14:26.020 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:14:28.440 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

00:14:37.900 www.tnc.news.com

Juno News - October 14, 2023

CBC deliberately whitewashes Hamas terrorism

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript