CBC is unfair to the Jewish state – and now this newspaper has the proof.
The public broadcaster’s antipathy towards Israel is not news, of course.
As this writer has documented in recent weeks, CBC has adamantly refused to call Hamas terrorists what they are – terrorists; they have blithely accepted Israel-Hamas war casualty counts that come directly from Hamas; and they have established a secretive internal group, “Middle East 2023,” to oversee coverage of Israel.
While CBC has said the internal group includes a person or persons who are “of the Jewish faith or identifies as Jewish,” some Jewish CBC staff have told the newspaper they are feeling isolated and victimized.
Most recently, we’ve revealed that a member of their digital team wears a keffiyeh to work, and has posted online that Israel is “an oppressive, destructive” country and “you’re a vile human being if you still defend or excuse Israel.”
Meanwhile, Jewish CBC journalists have been obliged to attend sessions with “facilitators” who say they want to “challenge the status quo of Zionism,” who say Israel oversees “an immoral and oppressive occupation” – and one of whom has said he “wholeheartedly, unreservedly supports” MPP Sarah Jama, who has been sanctioned for anti-Semitic views in the provincial Legislature.
For the many who believed the taxpayer-subsidized broadcaster was unfair to Israel, rest assured: you were not imagining it. And now B’nai Brith Canada has provided us with convincing proof.
The Jewish human rights organization analyzed hundreds of published CBC stories starting on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists swept into Israel and slaughtered hundreds. They went to Dec. 31 and used the media framing model of Robert M. Entman, the award-winning American professor who has analyzed media bias for decades.
The bottom line, according to the analysis: the CBC is wildly biased against Israel.
Of 150 stories in the final analysis, about half were considered openly pro-Palestinian. Only a fraction of that, 32, were possibly pro-Israel. The remainder were considered “balanced.”
Some of the analysis was done with manual coding, and some with software-assisted content analysis. That hybrid approach is considered 95% accurate. “Bias” was determined by how issues were framed in an article, what was included and what was omitted, and how information was presented. Sources were key, too – for example, using Hamas as a source more than Israel (as the CBC regularly does).
Every effort was made by B’nai Brith’s analysts to “maintain objectivity and fairness throughout.”
B’nai Brith’s Director of Research and Advocacy Rich Robertson had this to say about the results: “CBC isn’t just failing at balanced journalism – they’re failing Canadians, especially Jewish Canadians. By skewing the facts of the Israel-Hamas conflict, they’re fuelling antisemitism, putting communities at risk, and giving credibility to a listed terror entity.”
He added: “When CBC distorts the reality of the Israel-Hamas conflict, it’s a betrayal of their duty as a public broadcaster. Canadians deserve accurate reporting, not narratives that stoke division and give credence to terrorists.”
In their study, B’nai Brith went through scores of stories published on CBC’s websites. Some of the headlines they looked at speak for themselves: “Food will run out in days under Israel’s total blockade of Gaza, humanitarian experts warn” (which didn’t happen), or “Palestinians say hundreds killed in Israeli airstrike on hospital;” (which didn’t happen either – Islamic Jihad did it, and the hospital is still standing).
The study’s results aren’t the only thing that is disturbing. When B’nai Brith genially offered to share its results with the broadcaster, CBC refused to meet with them.
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This writer contacted CBC chief spokesperson Chuck Thompson about that.
“Given the ongoing scrutiny and intense pressure around our coverage of the Middle East, requests for conversations with CBC News leadership make it difficult to ensure they are equally accessible to any person or group of people who wish to provide feedback,” Thompson told this newspaper, which is the first publish the startling results.
If B’nai Brith has “any comments or complaints about our coverage,” Thompson sniffed, they can take it up with CBC’s Ombudsman.
That’s not just discourteous and dismissive, it’s the wrong response.
When any journalist is making mistakes – as CTV did, this week, when it manipulated a quote of Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre – there must be accountability. Not refusing to meet.
And, when this writer taught at Carleton’s School of Journalism, our students were told they always had two solemn obligations: accuracy and fairness.
At CBC, when Israel is the subject, accuracy and fairness no longer seem to be part of the job description.