More than 2,000 journalists and community members signed an open letter asking Canadian news media to provide coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Two employees from the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) claim that CBC has retaliated by barring them from covering any more news in the region. It is now a thought crime to even suggest fair coverage in Israel.
This is a disappointment, but hardly surprising, unfortunately.
For anyone interested in reading, here is the full letter below (source).
An open letter to Canadian newsrooms on covering Israel-Palestine
“The Middle East is complicated.”
“We need to hear both sides.”
“Everyone has a lot of emotions about this.”
These are just some of the excuses news editors have provided to Canadian journalists trying to cover the escalating violence against Palestinians.
The lack of nuanced Canadian media coverage of forced expulsions and indiscriminate airstrikes over the last three days, which have so far killed at least 137 Palestinians, including 36 children, has been disappointing. (This was the number of casualties at the time of writing this letter)
As journalists, we cannot selectively choose which international human rights violations to report on.
This past year, Canadian media has reckoned with and acknowledged the lack of diversity and nuance in covering issues of human rights. The work has just started.
Our industry rallied to properly cover the Black Lives Matter protests after the brutal police killing of George Floyd, and the disproportionate impacts of the pandemic on marginalized communities at home and around the world. We are learning to report on Indigenous experiences and issues in a nuanced way that recognizes the long historical impact of colonialism. Why shouldn’t Palestinians be afforded the same nuance?
According to the United Nations and countless human rights organizations around the world (including ones based within Israel), what’s happening in the Occupied Palestinian Territories is a “ grave breach of international law .” Some groups believe the attacks amount to an “ethnic cleansing.” [1] [2] It should be covered as such.
Dispossession is not complicated.
Violence against innocent civilians and children is not complicated.
Police aggression and state sanctioned racism is not complicated.
Journalists cover these issues all the time.
So why do we tip toe around coverage of Israel and Palestinians?
It’s time for Canadian newsrooms to carry out the necessary due diligence and report on this region with nuance and context. For that to happen, Canadian newsrooms will have to first acknowledge their failings.
Anyone who has worked in a Canadian newsroom has encountered the reluctance or resistance to covering Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. Canadian style guides still ban the use of the word “Palestine” in coverage; this has led to many corrections over the years. Racialized journalists have reported feeling overly scrutinized, or even censored, after every story pitch on this region. The unfair standard applied to these story pitches has only added to the burden they feel in diversifying Canadian media coverage.
Unfortunately, newsroom leaders are skittish, fearing the deluge of complaints that often follows coverage. The deep reluctance to cover the ongoing nature of the Israeli occupation leads to urgent breaking news coverage that never includes the context that surrounds the issue. This content almost always centers around Israeli politicians and organizations, and representatives of the Israeli government and military; rarely are Palestinian voices ever centred or featured.
A recent Al Jazeera column highlighted only two Canadian publications reported on a new Human Rights Watch report that found Israel was guilty of decades-long crimes against humanity against Palestinians: Canadian Press and The Globe and Mail. Mainstream Israeli groups tracking human rights abuses against Palestinians like B’Tselem have done the same.
The CBC, Canada’s public broadcaster, did not have any coverage on the HRW report. Derek Stoffel, the CBC’s world news editor and former Middle East correspondent, explained the silence by saying that his newsroom did “not have the reporter resources on this day to devote to it.”
We’ve all heard this before. But the deaths of innocent people anywhere in the world, let alone a highly contentious region where many Canadians have vested interest, merits in-depth, fair and balanced coverage.
Our ask is simple: That all the tenets of journalism should apply to Canadian coverage of Occupied Palestinian Territories moving forward. Fair and balanced coverage should include historical and social context, reporters with knowledge of the region and, crucially, Palestinian voices.
Ian Kummer
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