On April 30, 2026, CJPME responded to the call for input from the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Francesca Albanese, on the role of media in the context of Israel’s policies and practices toward the Palestinian people, especially after 7 October 2023. The call will inform an upcoming report to the UN by the Special Rapporteur.

Introduction

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) has been systematically tracking media bias on Israel and Palestine through the Media Accountability Project (MAP) since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The MAP was launched in early 2023 to encourage Canadian media to provide fair-minded coverage of the Middle East, especially on Palestine. Over the past three years, we have sent thousands of letters to journalists and editors documenting various forms of anti-Palestinian bias. We curate a living database of thousands of examples of bias (visit: cjpmemap.ca/reference).¹ We welcome the Special Rapporteur to contact us for further documentation or examples.

Given the limits on the length of submissions, this contribution will focus on a handful of case studies from 2023–present in Canadian media. There is considerable evidence of Canadian media complicity in covering up the destruction of Gaza and the subjugation of Palestinians. In our monitoring of the media, we have identified and dismantled a variety of discursive practices employed by the media to disparage Palestinians and justify the crimes committed against them. These examples represent a small sample of what we have found.

Discrediting and endangering Palestinian journalists

Canadian media outlets have normalized Israel’s targeted killings of Palestinian journalists and media workers by framing them as Hamas affiliates or terrorists. The most egregious examples uncritically echo the accusations of Israeli officials and the Israeli military. According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, Israel has killed 262 journalists and media workers in Gaza since October 7, 2023.²

Anas al-Sharif

Perhaps the most notorious case in the Canadian context came in the aftermath of the murder of Anas al-Sharif, an Al Jazeera journalist who was deliberately killed on August 10, 2025. While many outlets and wire services contributed to spreading baseless allegations against al-Sharif manufactured by Israel, below are illustrative examples from CBC News and National Post.

CBC News

CBC News is Canada’s publicly owned national news and information service. During a broadcast on August 11, 2025, CBC News uncritically repeated Israel’s claim that al-Sharif was “the head of a Hamas terror cell” and was “posing as a journalist.”³ An article on their website uses the lede, “Israel says Anas al-Sharif was a Hamas cell leader, something the UN and press freedom groups deny,” emphasizing in the article that Israel was “citing intelligence and documents found in Gaza as evidence” of their claims against al-Sharif.⁴

National Post

National Post, the flagship paper of Postmedia, Canada’s largest newspaper chain, ran a story headlined, “IDF says it has killed Hamas 'terror' cell leader posing as 'Al Jazeera' journalist.” The story included files by the Jewish News Syndicate and Associated Press (AP). The piece stated as a fact that, “The Israel Defense Forces killed Anas al-Sharif, who posed as a journalist for the Qatari Al Jazeera network but was actively serving as the head of a Hamas terrorist cell.” After public outcry, and a challenge by CJPME,⁵ National Post edited the article and added an editor’s note, which reads, “This story and its headline were updated to more clearly reflect that Anas al-Sharif’s purported connection to Hamas is an Israeli allegation.”⁶

National Post also deleted its initial tweet, which stated, “IDF kills Hamas terror cell leader posing as ‘Al Jazeera’ journalist.”⁷ However, despite the changes, the National Post continued to disparage al-Sharif and Palestinian journalists more broadly in their subsequent publications (See section on “Editorial lines”).

Ismail al-Ghoul

After Israel’s attack on al-Shifa Hospital in 2024, media coverage in Canada — including by Global News⁸ and a widely distributed wire article by AP⁹ — failed to mention the reported beating and kidnapping of journalists, including Ismail al-Ghoul, a reporter for Al Jazeera Arabic. The failure to report the crime came despite condemnations from the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. A few months later, al-Ghoul was assassinated by Israel. Reporting in Canada on his assassination was mostly provided by the wire services AP and Reuters. The articles were largely framed around Israel’s baseless claim that al-Ghoul, and many Palestinian journalists, are Hamas affiliates. AP reported:

The Israeli government closed Al-Jazeera offices in Israel in May, based on a new law that enables it to close down media outlets it says are a security threat and incite against Israeli troops. The Israeli government says the network has close ties to Hamas — a claim Al-Jazeera denies — as many of the militant group’s leading officials are based in the Qatari capital.¹⁰

A Reuters headline in The Globe and Mail read, “Israel kills an Al Jazeera journalist and says, without evidence, he was a Hamas operative.”¹¹ Even though the article at least notes the baselessness of Israel’s claim, Israel’s accusation still dictates the overall framing.

Dehumanization of Palestinians

Palestinians are regularly demonized in the Canadian press. Postmedia outlets refer to Palestinians and the Palestine solidarity movement as a “death cult,”^{12, 13} publish explicitly pro-Israel content from the Jewish News Syndicate incorrectly labelled as “news” (rather than “opinion,” as recommended by the National NewsMedia Council)^14,15 and have smeared Palestine advocates as “Nazis.”¹⁶

In the National Post, Canada’s former ambassador to Israel, and a former Board member of CBC, Vivian Bercovici published an article that justified violence against Palestinian civilians titled, “There are reports of civilian casualties in the Israel hostage rescue. But what is a 'civilian'?” The lede of the article reads, “Civilians, in my universe, also do not typically lock up hostages in their homes. Why is the west pretending the terrorists are innocents?”¹⁷ The article casts doubt on whether Palestinians in Gaza can be described as civilians at all, denying Palestinians civilian status and depicting them as an undifferentiated enemy.

An article by The Globe and Mail’s editorial board titled, “Israel must stop helping Hamas to win,” the authors argue that “Hamas has used the civilian population of Gaza as both a shield and as a weapon,” portraying Palestinian civilians as understandable targets for Israel.¹⁸ An October 2023 article by The Globe and Mail editorial board asserts that “Israel has the right to defend itself, even if the exercise of that right results in collateral civilian casualties.”¹⁹ Since then, over 75,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and the paper continues publishing editorials in support of Israel’s aggressions.

During an interview on the Alex Pierson Show, a news talk show on 640 Toronto, owned by Corus Entertainment, which also owns Global News, an IDF soldier said that Palestinians in Gaza are “heartless savages,” with no meaningful pushback from Pierson.²⁰

Obscuring crimes against Palestinians

Genocide denial

On the Ben Mulroney Show on 640 Toronto, hosted by the son of former prime minister Brian Mulroney, Ben Mulroney condescendingly dismissed factual allegations of genocide in Gaza out of hand, comparing it to “flat earth theory” and saying that he will not engage in conversation with anyone making this claim.²¹ Ben Mulroney was later promoted to the host of the flagship political affairs program of Global News, The West Block, where he regularly interviews guests on issues related to Israel.

Obfuscating ethnic cleansing

On the matter of ethnic cleansing, Postmedia published articles from the Jewish News Syndicate that spoke positively about “relocating” Palestinians from Gaza.²² It focused not on the crime of ethnic cleansing, but “Israel’s willingness to facilitate mass migration” for Gazans.

An op-ed in the National Post by Anthony Koch argued that Gazans are responsible for creating a “dystopia,” and that “until they are held to account for it, there will be no peace” and called for a “reckoning.”²³

Censorship

The establishment press has also contributed to covering up crimes by complying with Israeli censorship orders. For example, CBC News participated in an aid flight over Gaza, but agreed to follow an Israeli censorship order, opting not to film the destruction of Gaza from overhead.²⁴ The British broadcaster ITV News, on the other hand, was provided a similar opportunity but chose to ignore Israel’s orders and instead broadcast the images of the widespread devastation of Gaza’s infrastructure.²⁵

Death tolls and occupied status

Palestinian civilian and militant casualties are regularly conflated in news reporting,²⁶ because outlets omit the reliable categorical data published by the United Nations and other reputable agencies.²⁷

Words are often used by journalists that unfairly downplay or whitewash Israeli actions. For example, Israel is often credited for “capturing” Palestinian territory, rather than “occupying” it — this misrepresentation is a regular feature of AP coverage.²⁸ Such usage may mislead readers into thinking that Israel has a strong claim to, or ownership of, these Palestinian territories, which they do not according to international law.

Until recently, CBC News used to falsely claim that Israel’s occupation of Gaza ended in 2005, until a recent review by the Independent Ombuds found that the claim was inaccurate in a sweeping Review instigated by CJPME.²⁹

Editorial lines

National Post

In the aftermath of the edited article and deleted tweet about Anas al-Sharif, the National Post’s opinion editor, Carson Jerema, published a piece titled, “How about not hiring terrorists to report the news?”³⁰ The killing of civilians and journalists is inevitable, he claimed, writing, “When civilians, including journalists, are killed in war, it is an inevitable, if tragic, consequence.” His article goes on to further justify Israel’s assassinations of civilians and media workers, and accuses media critics of “[inflating] the numbers of reporters killed.”

In 2024, Rob Roberts, the editor-in-chief of the National Post, stated that the paper is an “explicitly Zionist newspaper.”³¹ The Maple, an independent outlet in Canada, reported on how Postmedia effectively publishes Israeli propaganda labelled as news.³²

In 2025, CJPME’s Jason Toney published an investigation with The Breach showing numerous instances of the National Post re-writing content from the Canadian Press, introducing pro-Israel narratives and erasing content that might create sympathy for Palestinians.³³ This was not the first time Postmedia came under fire for this practice. Reuters and AP had a public spat with the newspaper chair for editing their wire content related to Israel.³⁴

The Globe and Mail

The pro-genocide rhetoric from The Globe and Mail began days after October 7, 2023, and has continued today. The Globe and Mail’s editorials are littered with anti-Palestinian language. They referred to Palestinian civilians as “non-combatants,” and described Israel’s attacks merely as “offensive operations.”³⁵

In response to a campaign by a pro-Israel organization’s campaign, they changed “Palestinian hostages” to “prisoners,” even though they were referring to Palestinians held in administrative detention and failed to provide readers with adequate context about what this means—we contend that Palestinians are effectively held as hostages by Israel and urge media to refer to them as such, or at least provide the essential context for understanding the issue.³⁶

Foreign interference

Numerous journalists and editors in Canada have participated in sponsored trips to Israel without providing transparent disclosures in their subsequent reporting. Many of these trips are organized by the Exigent Foundation, led by Vivian Bercovici (See section of “Dehumanization of Palestinians”). The Exigent Foundation is covertly funded by the Israeli government, as revealed by Press Progress in an investigation.³⁷ The Maple maintains a public list of Canadian journalists who have taken sponsored Israel trips.³⁸ These trips diminish the integrity of news media and journalism in Canada, and represent an overreach by the Israeli government in foreign media that is widely tolerated in Canada.

About CJPME

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is a non-profit and secular organization bringing together people of all backgrounds who labour to see justice and peace take root again in the Middle East. Its mission is to empower decision-makers to view all sides with fairness and to promote the equitable and sustainable development of the region.

CJPME’s Director of Media Advocacy, Jason Toney, co-edited the anthology When Genocide Wasn’t News: How Canadian media covered up the destruction of Gaza (Breach Books, 2025). The book provides greater details on the manifold ways in which Canadian media whitewashed Israel’s genocidal violence, dehumanized Palestinians, and punished journalists who dared to speak out. We would be happy to send a complimentary copy upon request.

Endnotes