"To include COGAT’s response but omit the original IPC report is unfair. Readers are left without reference to the essential document that is relevant to this discussion. To meet CBC’s fundamental principle of balance, reference to the report and a short description of its findings must be included in your article."
April 4, 2024
To:
Chris Brown, Journalist, CBC News
Nancy Waugh, Senior Manager of Journalistic Standards, CBC News
Dear Chris Brown,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East to provide some recommendations for a recent article titled “Will the missile attack that killed aid workers change Israeli minds about the Gaza war?” published on April 3 on CBC News.
In the section of your article titled “Food Shortages,” you quote the Coordination of Government Activities in Territories (COGAT), a unit in the Israeli Ministry of Defense, to provide their perception of the level of starvation in Gaza. COGAT’s statement is a response to the special brief released by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification Global Initiative (IPC). The brief contains an extensive, data-driven overview of food availability and access in Gaza and concludes that a famine is imminent. To include COGAT’s response but omit the original IPC report is unfair. Readers are left without reference to the essential document that is relevant to this discussion. To meet CBC’s fundamental principle of balance, reference to the report and a short description of its findings must be included in your article.
Rather than cite the IPC findings, the only opposing view provided in this part of your article is that COGAT’s observations have been “refuted by the U.S. State Department as well as by Palestinians in Gaza who told CBC News food scarcity is widespread.” While this is somewhat useful context, by omitting the IPC report it makes it seem as if there are only vague competing claims about famine, rather than well-founded, data-driven proof that famine is occurring in Gaza.
Rose Mardikian,
Media Analyst, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East