Juno News - October 14, 2023CBC deliberately whitewashes Hamas terrorism
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Summary
In this episode, we take a look at a leaked memo from the Canadian Public Broadcaster, the CBC, about not referring to Hamas as a terrorist organization in their coverage of the Middle East. We also hear from Mike Fagelman, the Executive Director of Honest Reporting Canada, which tries to keep the media responsible on this issue.
Transcript
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My friend Avi Yamini, who is a contributor to Rebel News, just landed in Israel.
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He's going to be covering, doing some reporting from the ground.
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And one of the things that he noted in his video I saw was that he was expecting to get
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on an empty plane, going to Tel Aviv from wherever he was flying.
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But in fact, he got on a plane that was full because people want to be with their families.
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They want to be in the country that matters a great deal to them.
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And there is a bit of inspiration we can all take from that.
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Now, of course, none of that is apparent in the Canadian media coverage or much of the
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CBC, you may have seen, had sent a memo out to its journalists urging them to not call
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Hamas a terror organization, to not refer to Hamas as a terror group.
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Now, let me say there are a number of things in journalism that you have to include both
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Hamas is, as a matter of fact and a matter of law in Canada, a terrorist entity.
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This is something that is a longstanding and really uncontested designation as a list of
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terror organizations in Canada that includes Hamas.
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You're also not supposed to reference the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza by Israel, which took place
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So any claim that Israel is occupying Gaza is simply untrue.
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But you're not going to see that reflected in CBC coverage.
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This memo sent out by the editorial standards director for the public broadcaster is one of
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the more explicit examples of this bias against Israel in its reporting of the Middle East,
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but by no means exclusively so, which is why Mike Fagelman always has his work cut out for
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He is the executive director of Honest Reporting Canada, which tries to keep the media responsible
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So this CBC memo, which I'm very grateful was leaked because it allows us to see very
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explicitly the marching orders that are being given.
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But I'm guessing you just from reading coverage that CBC has published could probably have
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indicated this was either an internalized bias or a matter of policy in their coverage already,
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Well, it's a systemic issue where a public broadcaster, again, taxpayer dollars, refuses
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Andrew, as you point out, the Canadian government deems that Hamas is a terrorist organization.
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But our public broadcaster is instructing its journalists to bend over backwards to sanitize
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terror and not call it for what it really needs to be called.
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The second component is in terms of not regarding Israel's pullout, disengagement from Gaza.
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They're basically saying, no, this is really effectively still an occupation.
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Israel controls the land, sea and air, whereas in reality, you know, up until a couple of
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days ago when Hamas had kidnapped about 100 plus people, there were no Israelis in Gaza,
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So when when you ask, you know, is our public broadcaster, is there an inherent bias?
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Well, we also have seen some reporters in the past push back against what they believe is
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a too pro-Israel bias that exists in the media.
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I know a couple of years ago there was this bizarre open letter that was being signed in
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which you had activist journalists saying that outlets should actually adopt the activist
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And that was revealing of the sensibility of where a lot of individual reporters in Canada
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And I think I think certainly in the past couple of years, we've noticed there's a shift in
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journalism where a lot of journalists who are tasked to be politically neutral and objective
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are shifting into becoming activists, even though they're under the payroll of either our public
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We're flagging journalists who constantly inserting their personal opinion and personal political
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views into their coverage that makes it jaundiced, that makes it slanted, and that fits their
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And I just to go back to this memo from CBC here, they say, please make sure you don't
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Everything we say and write publicly as CBC journalists can be seen as part of our coverage
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The fact that Hamas is a registered and designated terrorist group in Canada is a fact.
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So by not including that, they're undermining what they say is a commitment to, you know,
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Public Safety Canada, our government deems Hamas, I think it was 20 years ago, I think
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it was over 20 years ago, declared Hamas a terror group, but they refuse to call it as
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There's also hypocrisy in the CBC's coverage of whether it's the Air India bombing.
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They have no problem appropriating the term and its variants, terror, terrorism, terrorist.
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But not as it relates to Hezbollah, the Lebanese terror group, not as it relates to ISIS even,
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They prefer to use language like fighter, insurgents, militants, the most sanitized language you
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You can't really tell who these people actually are.
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You know, in some respect, it almost comes off like their actions are legitimate when
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One of the things that I've always found so difficult about this issue is that you are
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having to deal with seven decades, I mean, you're dealing with millennia of history, but
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if you're just talking about the state of Israel, you're dealing with, you know, seven
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plus decades of history, which if you've not been following it on the ins and outs, and
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even if you have been, it's very difficult to condense into a few sentences of background
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And as a result, a lot of misinformation tends to be disseminated very easily.
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And I mean, one, and I know you're well aware of this, people may have seen this map that
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or it's a series of maps that purports to show, you know, Israeli land grabs from Palestinians.
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And it's probably one of the most easily debunked and historically inaccurate maps.
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You see media outlets in some cases referencing it.
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And like, do you think this is an example of, in most cases, incompetence or bias?
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Like, do you think it's just journalists that don't know history, that don't know geopolitics,
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that are just being fed information from faulty sources?
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Yeah, I don't think they're mutually exclusive.
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I do think it is a healthy combination of both.
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I think there are certainly some journalists where there is an element of malice, where there's
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And then I think there's like, you know, lots of people, there's no shortage of ignorance
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and naivete who accept the slanted political views and falsehoods as being conventional
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wisdom when they're not and are willing instead of doing their due diligence and fact checking
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and confirming the veracity of, you know, simple information that you can find with the
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click of a button on Google, they refuse to do so.
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Or maybe there's the lack of editorial vigor and due diligence.
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In any event, the resulting effect is that people are misled.
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And this fundamentally changes paradigms about Israel, the Middle East, Canadian attitudes,
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One of the things that I am always encouraged by is that you do seem to get traction when
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you raise these issues from a lot of media outlets.
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They'll issue corrections, they'll change reporting.
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And I'm wondering if that's happening more or less frequency.
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Are you finding it's harder to get those corrections and concessions when you point out these issues?
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It's a mixed bag and it's always going to be case by case there.
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We have felt that we found that, you know, there are certain media outlets were more amenable
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And then there are others who, quite frankly, are obtuse.
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And I'll be honest, provide a bit of a window dressing of journalistic accountability.
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I think, you know, referencing the CBC, it's a perfect example where a public broadcaster
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is far too often reluctant to atone for journalistic transgressions.
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Other media outlets we found are open to a dialogue.
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Yeah, and just to use CBC as an example, one of the things that has happened with them
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I believe we have lost Mike, so we'll have to get Mike back here in just a moment.
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But I should say, I mean, the CBC example, it was a leaked memo.
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Yes, it was a memo that was published, that was disseminated, and that was reported on.
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And at first, there were people saying, oh, we don't know if this is true or not.
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When asked for comment, CBC completely owned up to it.
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They completely bought the fact that, like, yeah, this is what we believe.
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So CBC is a great example here, where as a matter of policy,
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they are choosing to take a very biased anti-Israel view,
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which is to say that we are going to whitewash the terrorism of Hamas.
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And when I mentioned yesterday on the show, and I'll repeat it for those who missed it,
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You cannot both sides, a conflict in which one side is a terrorist group attacking civilians.
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You cannot just talk about this as though there are two belligerents in a conflict,
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This is a case where you have a terrorist insurgent group that is attacking Israeli civilians,
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attacking children, seniors, women, doesn't matter, and doing absolutely brutal things to them.
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And by the way, I will mention one of the challenges yesterday.
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I had acknowledged that there had been this report from I-24, an Israeli reporter,
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in which she quoted IDF soldiers as saying they had seen evidence of babies being beheaded.
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This has become just an absolute, like, brutal debate online about,
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But I said, look, I've seen photos that suggest this stuff has gone on.
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And, you know, look, I would love for it to not be true.
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I would absolutely love for no infants to have gone through what that reporter,
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and what the soldiers with whom she spoke described happening.
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Like anything in a conflict, you have to verify and avoid the tendency to just buy into memes,
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buy in information which is traveling at breakneck speeds and can't be verified.
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But it's something that I think it's interesting how many people are trying so hard to say it's not true definitively.
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Because they know how difficult it will be for them to keep up the narrative and rhetoric they're keeping up,
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which is whitewashing Hamas' crimes, if, in fact, this ends up becoming even more verified than it is.
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We have Mike Fegelman back from Honest Reporting Canada.
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I mean, obviously, information's coming at breakneck speeds.
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Media outlets, I believe, do have an important role in sharing both sides of the conflict here.
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And if there are people in Canada that are rallying because they oppose Israel,
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I think their voices should be included for context.
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Because I know you've raised criticism about the platforming of some of these people.
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We draw the line when individuals are given a platform to justify terrorism.
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And listen, if it's a live interview and something is said that, you know,
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whether it's calling for Jews to be decapitated,
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What we're seeing far too often are column inches, reporting, airtime given to people who are saying,
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look, it's because of the settlements, because of the so-called occupation of Gaza,
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that this is what brought upon Hamas to come in, murder 1,200 people, decapitate babies, burn whole families alive.
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And it's shocking that journalists just accept all these kind of claims at face value
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Hamas calls for Israel's destruction and the Jewish people to be on the receiving end of a genocide for or against.
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Yeah, and I mentioned, I don't know if you heard it because it was when we were having the connection issues,
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but, you know, this is not an example of someone inadvertently using a loaded word
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or someone who accidentally uses something, which, you know, for example,
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I didn't have a lot of experience when I started out in media writing about Indigenous issues.
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So there were times when I would accidentally use the wrong term for something
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and someone would say, hey, Andrew, this is what you should do.
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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.
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And look, there are people that they interview who use, you know, lexicon like resistance.
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You know, Palestinians are entitled to resistance.
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And I saw a report a couple of minutes ago in the past, Andrew, in the past 10 minutes,
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you know, I think there's a dozen Hezbollah Paraglai terrorists who are trying to go into Israel and attack.
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And are we going to see people saying, oh, well, that's legitimate, it's justifiable.
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Look, they're trying to end the occupation now.
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And that's the, you know, the statement some people are making are, look, it's been 75 years of occupation, 75 years.
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What you're actually saying is that Israel fundamentally has no right to exist.
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But, you know, our journalists are not pushing back against these claims.
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They're accepting it at face value, perhaps because they're willing and agreeable.
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Well, I know you are doing a great job keeping them honest, as your name suggests.
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Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
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Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.