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Poor coverage - Media outlet to be critiqued
A CJPME Media Researcher has launched a media alert for the following article. Please submit a quick response to the media, even if it’s just a sentence or two:
Title of Piece: Ehsanullah Amiri: "How Israeli airstrike on Hezbollah, assassination of key Hamas leader in Iran could escalate"
Media Outlet: Ottawa Citizen
Click here to access the piece online. If the article is behind a media paywall, click here to view the article in .pdf format.
Comments of the CJPME Media Researcher:
(Note: Please do not copy and paste the material below as the content to your message to the media - put all comments in your own words):
Ehsanullah Amiri’s article in Ottawa Citizen’s “News” category is undoubtedly a better fit for “Opinion.” Amiri’s article is an interview with Dr. Casey Babb, a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and an International fellow with the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, where he asserts his own thoughts on the possibility of a regional war following Israel’s assassinations of Hezbollah commander, Fuad Shukr, and Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh. Please email Ehsanullah Amiri, as well as the editor-in-chief and deputy editor at Ottawa Citizen, to inform them of this oversight and other issues with this article.
- While Amiri clarifies that the interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length, he reports a lot of biased, weighted language, like “terrorists,” “genocidal terrorists,” and “terrorist organizations,” while the article is nonetheless labeled as “news.” It is impossible to know if these inflammatory words are the exact phrasing used by the interviewee. Regardless, given that Babb is essentially given a platform to express his opinions at length without skepticism by the journalist, much like an op-ed, this article should be marked as Opinion.
- Amiri does not question the claim that the attack in Golan Heights killed 12 “Israeli civilians” and that it was a “terrorist attack.” The reality is other: the 12 children who were killed are Syrian Druze and do not have and refuse to get Israeli citizenship, and Hezbollah has denied being behind this attack. All of this is essential context.
- Amiri reports Babb’s inflammatory and dehumanizing language that Hamas are “the worst people on the planet.”
- Overall, the article should not be labeled as “news,” but as opinion, especially when the interviewee is not neutral and objective regarding the possible escalation in the region, nor are his comments balanced with other insights.
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Thank you very much. Every response makes a difference.
The CJPME Media Centre Team
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