"Overall, your article lacks balance and impartiality. Your article gives hugely disproportionately more space and importance to antisemitic hate crimes than it does to Islamophobic ones. Good Journalism is based on fairness and balance, and this article fails to uphold even this most basic journalistic principle."
February 23, 2024
To:
Stewart Bell, Digital Broadcast Journalist, Global News
Sonia Verma, Editor-in-Chief, Global News
Dear Stewart Bell and Sonia Verma,
I am writing to express my concern about the article: “Government threat report warns about attacks in Canada inspired by Hamas-Israel conflict,” published on February 23 in Global News.
While your article is about attacks in general in Canada amidst Hamas-Israel conflict, this is not how the article is structured. Your article completely overemphasizes antisemitic hate crimes while not giving nearly the same attention to Islamophobia hate crimes.
First, all the media included in your article are about antisemitism:
- The trailer of your special report set to premiere Saturday, February 24, with the caption: “With a recent uptick of hate crimes and antisemitism within Canada”
- A video captioned: “Antisemitism victims speak out amid surge of cases in Canada: ‘It’s just hatred,’”
- A picture of federal government threat assessment reports only mentioning antisemitism
- A video with the caption: “The RCMP arrest, charge teenager in relation to alleged terror plot on Jewish Community.”
One would rightly expect that media about Islamophobia would also be included, but this is not the case.
Second, you only mention examples of attacks against the Jewish community: the arrest of a youth by the police in Ottawa in December 2023 and a youth charged with murder conspiracy, while you could have done the same for the Muslim community, such as by mentioning the recent conviction of a man for deliberately driving his truck into five members of the Afzaal family in London, Ontario on June 6, 2021, or the 2017 Quebec mosque attack that killed six men.
Third, you write: “The reports noted that antisemitic hate crimes were already rising before the Hamas attack, and had jumped 182 per cent since 2015 to more than 500 in 2022.”
However, you do not mention any data regarding Islamophobic hate crimes, while this is the supposed central idea of your article, and this information is accessible.
Fourth, you only allocate three brief paragraphs at the end of your article about possible Palestinian and Muslim targets, underlining even more the lack of balance in your reporting and the lack of importance you give to Palestinian and Muslim hate crimes.
Overall, your article lacks balance and impartiality. Your article gives hugely disproportionately more space and importance to antisemitic hate crimes than it does to Islamophobic ones.
Good Journalism is based on fairness and balance, and this article fails to uphold even this most basic journalistic principle.
I, therefore, ask you to balance the article by providing more examples and information on Islamophobic hate crimes.
I therefore strongly recommend that Global News incorporate my recommendations and exercise less bias when reporting on hate crimes in Canada in the future.
Sincerely,
Fatima Haidar,
Media Analyst, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East