I hope this context is helpful in understanding some of the flaws in the argument posed here by Matthew Lau. I am certainly not arguing CBC isn't biased. They are. But it seems to me that they are mostly biased in the exact opposite way that Matthew Lau suggests. I'll save that argument for my own op-ed submission, perhaps!
Dear Financial Post editors,
I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) to alert you to a factual error in Matthew Lau's recent op-ed, "Yes, CBC, you really are biased."
The article states, "CBC’s director of journalistic standards instructed employees not to refer to Hamas as 'terrorists' or mention that Israel ended its occupation of Gaza in 2005." However, Israel did not end its occupation of Gaza in 2005. The text states this as a fact that is problematically being omitted by editors. In reality, Gaza's status as an occupied territory after 2005 is a matter of settled international law. The evidence of this claim being false is vast, but it is most aptly contradicted by the 2024 decision by the ICJ. The decision's relevant components were summarized in The Guardian by Kenneth Roth.
Additionally, this exact matter was settled by the CBC's Independent Ombuds in a recent Review. After the CBC asserted that Gaza's occupation by Israel ended in 2005, the Ombuds concluded the claim "falls short of meeting the criteria for Accuracy." Of course, Postmedia is not subject to CBC Ombuds decisions, but I hope this intervention still carries relevance and weight.
Given that Mr. Lau's claims fail the standard of Accuracy established by the Canadian Association of Journalists, even in the context of an op-ed, I respectfully request a correction and editor's note be published.
The piece suffers from other factual issues as well. It questions the Gaza Health Ministry's numbers, suggesting that they are manipulated. He references another op-ed as evidence. However, the UN, numerous reputable NGOs, and even Israel itself have affirmed that the numbers are accurate.
Again, this fails the standard of Accuracy, even as it pertains to op-eds, which must be based in fact.
I would also alert the Financial Post that the studies by B'nai Brith Canada and the HR Canada Charitable Organization are both seriously flawed from a methodological viewpoint. Both studies are designed in a way that makes their findings of anti-Israel bias inevitable. Neither would pass peer review.
The HR Charitable Organization study was an AI-conducted "sympathy analysis." There is no codebook provided and definitions of terms are suspiciously weak. In the study, the researchers admit to not defining “sympathy” — the keystone term for their research — instead relying on a black-box AI model's “internally learned statistical associations.” This alone is enough to dismiss the report's findings.
When it comes to the numbers from B'nai Brith Canada, the report's "sourcing bias" metric penalizes the CBC for relying on international humanitarian or non-governmental organizations, automatically grouping them with Palestinian-aligned narratives and flagging items as ‘biased’ if this sourcing exceeds a 70% threshold. This means that any coverage that relies on the perspectives of trusted international humanitarian organizations is automatically perceived with suspicion. Speculating here, but I think most people would agree that automatically counting NGOs or humanitarian groups as pro-Palestine in an assessment of media bias is suspect at best, and makes the study totally unreliable at worst.
I hope this context is helpful in understanding some of the flaws in the argument posed here by Matthew Lau. I am certainly not arguing CBC isn't biased. They are. But it seems to me that they are mostly biased in the exact opposite way that Matthew Lau suggests. I'll save that argument for my own op-ed submission, perhaps!
Regards,
Jason Toney