The Media Accountability Project  

Dear CFMJ newsroom:

I’m writing to you on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East regarding Friday’s segment hosted by Ben Mulroney regarding Esther, the 14-year-old Toronto girl who went missing two weeks ago and who, thank god, is now home with her family. Mulroney’s decision to use this singularly joyous occasion to invent baseless accusations against others, simply because he dislikes their politics, is inexcusable and warrants an on-air apology.

The specific portion of the broadcast at issue was when Mulroney spoke as follows:

This young 14-year-old who had been? I don't know. Taken from her family or just separated from her family. That's what we can say right now and through some misguided sense of freedom in Palestine, perhaps, some people were doing that, this 14-year-old who probably couldn't find Israel on a map.

Mulroney is of course correct that those who tore down the missing child posters acted reprehensibly. There is no excuse for such an action and anyone with a shred of decency would condemn it, as do we.

But for him to invent, out of whole cloth, a scenario in which those reprobates were tearing down these posters in the name of freeing Palestine is outrageous. By suggesting to his audience – based on nothing whatsoever except his imagination – that whoever committed these despicable acts was doing so as part of some twisted form of Palestinian activism (one that we would not hesitate to condemn), Mulroney is engaging in gratuitous slander against an entire movement.

It is true that Mulroney qualified his words by saying “perhaps,” and if one is to simply speculate as to what is within the realm of the possible then of course it is not impossible that his musings are accurate. There is an innumerable quantity of similarly “not impossible” scenarios that anyone could concoct, if they are limited only by their creativity. That limit should be the elementary journalistic ethics that demand that there be some basis for an announcer’s speculation on such a serious matter, beyond their personal loathing of those he is impugning. Try as we might, we can find no report that includes any factual basis whatsoever for Mulroney’s conjecture. If there is one, then it should have been described in the broadcast. If there is not, then he should be required to retract his statements and apologize for them on air.

Sincerely,

 

Adam Allouba

Media Advocate
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East