Inaccuracy in article "Antisemitism on campus is 'systemic' and going unaddressed, says new report"

The following are emails sent from CJPME to CBC between August 11–September 2, 2026 regarding its coverage of the Campus Antisemitism and Student Experiences (CASE) report.

August 11, 2026

Basem Boshra, Standards, CBC

Dear Basem Boshra,

I am writing on behalf of Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) regarding inaccurate reporting in the article, “Antisemitism on campus is 'systemic' and going unaddressed, says new report.”

The article makes the following claims that I believe violate the JSP:

“95.7% of Jewish students say they saw or experienced antisemitism in 2025” [Appears under the headline.]
“The surveys conducted from Nov. 17 to Dec. 19 last year found that 95.7 per cent of Jewish students had experienced or witnessed at least one antisemitism incident in the previous 12 months.”

These particular sentences are inaccurate because they treat the data from the report as though they are precise population estimates. However, this is inaccurate or misleading for several reasons.

The report itself specifies that the survey recruitment “was facilitated by Jewish student organizations on campus, Jewish community networks, and related dissemination channels.” Independent Jewish Voices raised serious concern that the survey may have excluded “progressive, anti-Zionist, and non-Zionist segments of the Jewish community.” As such, the data is heavily skewed. Given that the report authors define anti-ZIonism as “a movement that calls for the erasure of Israel and denies the Jewish people the right to self-determination in part of their ancestral homeland,” we can reasonably suspect that anti-Zionist Jewish groups were likely not consulted.
The report also states that the data is not weighted. Thus, despite the strong indicator that the survey suffers from extreme selection bias by the groups it chose to disseminate the survey through, the data cannot be treated as broadly representative of the Jewish community.
The report itself is explicit that “The Jewish-sample results are therefore reported as valid percentages among respondents who answered each item and are interpreted descriptively rather than as precise population estimates.” As such, CBC’s claims about the data are plainly false and misleading and merit a correction. The data was misrepresented despite explicit warnings from the authors.

We are therefore requesting that a correction be issued regarding the claims we specified above. The methodology of the report should be specified in the correction in order for readers to understand the report’s actual findings. We also believe it is necessary to include the perspective of Independent Jewish Voices given their criticism of the survey and their exclusion from the data as well as CBC’s reporting on this subject.

Sincerely,

Jason Toney

Director of Media Advocacy, CJPME

August 13, 2026

Dear Basem, Maxime Bertrand, and Brodie Fenlon,

Unfortunately, I am requesting an Ombuds review. My previous correspondence regarding this article can be seen in this thread.

I believe the story is neither clear nor accurate. Explaining the limits of the study would not be exhaustive, it is necessary in this particular case, as emphasized by the authors of the report. CBC has done exactly what the author's advise against.

I also want to add an additional concern I had not previously mentioned that makes my case stronger. The caption of the photo used is the most obvious inaccuracy, and intensifies the issues I previously identified. It says:

"Pro-Israel demonstrators protest outside a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on McGill University's campus in Montreal in the spring of 2024. A new national report says a vast majority of Jewish students have experienced or witnessed antisemitism on campus."

As pointed out by IJV, among other issues, 80% of the CASE report's respondents were from Quebec and Ontario, so it is not representative nationally. And the claim generally misrepresents the findings as applying to the "vast majority of Jewish students," rather than the specific group of students who were surveyed in a survey that the authors admit faced "uneven mobilization across student and community networks." This claim falsely insinuates that the data was nationally representative, and it was not. This is an inaccuracy, not a case of missing, 'exhaustive' context.

Writing in the Globe and Mail, members of the Jewish Faculty Network criticized the CASE report and accused the report of being partisan for how they define anti-Zionism. They further argued:

"This is compounded by how the report gathered its data. It recruited Jewish respondents through Hillel and Chabad – the networks least likely to reach non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jewish students – and excluded non-Zionist Jewish groups, like Independent Jewish Voices. A survey that can’t hear from Jews like us, filtered through a definition that casts our views as hatred, doesn’t measure antisemitism. It confirms its own premises."

Again, the CASE report explicitly states that, because of their methodology, the results cannot be interpreted as "precise population estimates," unlike many other polls that CBC reports on. Despite that disclaimer, CBC's reporting describes the statistics as if they are population estimates without including the necessary qualification. I firmly believe that the CBC's claims are inaccurate and violate the JSP standard of Accuracy. This is clearly evidenced by the Methodology section of the CASE report.

It is highly unfortunate that the CASE authors of the report designed it in this manner, as I believe their methodological decisions actually undermine the effort to better understand and combat the very real issue of anti-Jewish hate in Canada. However, their decisions demand that media outlets cover the findings as they are. The reality is that there is no available evidence to support the claim that "95.7% of Jewish students say they saw or experienced antisemitism in 2025.” The assertion does not stand on its own. Further, this claim is deeply unfair to the Jewish students that were excluded from this survey because of their rejection of Zionism and who disagree with the core premise that the CASE report begins with, that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. Whether it's Independent Jewish Voices, Jews Say No To Genocide, the Jewish Faculty Network, or polling that found only 51% of Canadian Jews identify as Zionist, we have strong indicators that the framing used by the CASE report's authors is not univerisally accepted by Jewish Canadians.

Note how differently the story is covered by Dylan Robertson of the Canadian Press. He correctly specifies the numbers are limited to those "who responded to a government-commissioned survey."

In a report that, again, explicitly conflates anti-Zionist with antisemitism, at a time when the expression of solidarity with Palestinians is facing criminalization, such reporting is not merely unacceptable, but dangerous to our civil liberties. CBC joined a chorus of other media outlets who inaccurately reported on the findings of a politically motivated, government-commissioned study, and CBC should lead the way by taking accountability.

Sincerely,

Jason Toney

August 28, 2026

Dear all,

I am very surprised to see that the article was edited, but I was not informed of the change. When I wrote, the text under the headline read:

“95.7% of Jewish students say they saw or experienced antisemitism in 2025”

Now, the text reads:

"95.7% of surveyed Jewish students say they saw or experienced antisemitism in 2025"

This is a very significant edit, but the article still only shows that the last update was August 5. What happened here? This is not a minor edit. Was this a stealth edit? These are significantly different claims with hugely important implications. I am urging CBC to add an editor's note and place a note on the corrections page.

I would like to add critical information to my complaint, as reported by The Grind Magazine in the article, "Campus Antisemitism Report Hid a Key Finding that Turns the Results Upside Down," by Joshua Sealy-Harrington.

I believe Sealy-Harrington's findings are significant enough to merit a follow-up article describing the flaws of the survey, or an editor's note to warn readers of its massive methodological failures. The key issues in question, as raised in The Grind's article, are as follows:

"[T]he report is based on an online survey that lacked proper screening. For example, Dr. El Jones—an Associate Professor in political and cultural studies who is neither a student nor Jewish—was able to complete the survey, twice."
"Second, the survey’s recruitment process, which prioritized explicitly Zionist organizations such as Hillel and Chabad, resulted in a clearly pro-Zionist bias: the report found that 86.8% of the survey respondents indicated that “Zionism” is very or somewhat important to them, despite the fact that a 2024 survey found that only half of Canadian Jews identify as Zionist."
"When the CASE report was first released on Aug. 5, it exclusively highlighted the experience of Zionist Jewish respondents, while making zero reference to the experience of those anti-Zionist students who participated in the survey. Later, following a slew of serious methodological critique, the report’s creators responded on a Canadian Jewish News podcast episode released Aug. 14 (see 9:49-10:14) by selectively disclosing unpublished data from the report. Unsurprisingly, this previously suppressed data undermines the report’s exaggerated conclusions. Then, writing in the National Post on Aug. 17, two of the report’s authors and one of its advisors noted that only 11 per cent of anti-Zionist Jewish respondents agreed with the statement that antisemitism was “a serious problem on campus.” When Zionist Jewish survey respondents answered that same question, that figure skyrocketed to 95 per cent."
"In stark contrast, amongst anti-Zionist Jewish respondents, a whopping 92 per cent said their campuses were safe and inclusive for Jewish students. In the National Post column, the authors try to write off the anti-Zionist data as a “psychological or social” phenomenon rooted in “a desire for social acceptance.”"

I would strongly encourage CBC editorial staff to read this article and make the necessary corrections, and I would ask it be considered by the Ombuds when taking on this review. I would also note that The Grind article mentions CBC's stealth edit and names its significance.

There were strong indicators that the CASE report was partisan and deeply flawed when it was published. The authors readily raised red flags, but CBC seemed to ignore them. As more information comes out, it is clear that CBC spread bad information to Canadians about antisemitism—information that unfairly erases the experiences of certain Jewish people and that dangerously conflates Israel with Jewish identity as that state commits genocide and apartheid.

Sincerely,

Jason Toney

August 28, 2026

Indeed, there was a stealth-edit, as the Wayback Machine proves.

I believe this stealth-edit constitutes a JSP violation, and would also like the Ombuds to consider this as part of my complaint.

I do not see how this change doesn't "significantly change the audience's understanding of [the] report."

CBC didn't specify anywhere in the article that the methodological section of the CASE report states that the data can't be used for "precise population estimates." The initial version described the data as if a population estimate. The new version restricts the claim to the respondents.

So to be clear, CBC reported that data — which we now know was not only partisan, but significantly manipulated — was broadly representative of tens of thousands of Jewish students in Canadian universities, and then did a stealth edit that reduced that number to 900. This is not a minor difference.

Sincerely,

Jason

September 2, 2026

Dear Maxime Bertrand,

I want to clarify that I would like this requested Review to move forward in spite of the changes that have been made to the article. I believe that while it has improved, there are still significant flaws.

1. As detailed by The Grind Magazine, the CASE report's authors engaged in a "rolling disclosure" of data they initially hid from the public. The authors later admitted in subsequent op-eds and podcasts that 92% of anti-Zionist Jewish respondents found campuses safe and inclusive, and only 11% of them agreed that antisemitism was a "serious problem on campus." CBC failed to update its article to reflect this massive discrepancy, allowing the findings of Zionist respondents to inaccurately speak for all Jewish students.

2. While CBC added a "Clarification" note to the article, and published an entry on its Corrections and Clarifications page, it failed to clearly acknowledge what Mr. Boshra admits in this exchange: "The story was indeed edited without the required transparency." The initial mishandling of these edits should be transparently admitted, as I believe it violated the spirit of the JSP. While someone in-the-know can infer the transparency issue based on the current text of the corrections and clarifications, an ordinary reader would not be able to.

3. The article still fails to explicitly disclose the severe limitations of the survey, including its voluntary, unweighted nature, and its lack of proper screening (which allowed non-students to take the survey multiple times). CBC cannot expect readers to infer these limitations of the survey based on what is currently written in the article — and that matters because it is all essential context. The edits to the article that have been made to this point demonstrate an acknowledgement from CBC that the survey was particularly flawed, but the article only went halfway in correcting the issues. Issuing sweeping corrections to an article about antisemitism is unfortunate, but it is the fault of, in my opinion, the pro-Israel, partisan architects of the survey, not the media. CBC should set the record all-the-way straight.

4. Finally, CBC continues to exclude counter-perspectives from non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jewish groups, such as Independent Jewish Voices, who were heavily marginalized by the survey’s flawed methodology, or members of the Jewish Faculty Network, who wrote an op-ed in the Globe and Mail lambasting the CASE report. I'm not aware of these concerns being meaningfully covered in any of CBC's coverage of the CASE report, so this is not a matter wherein "balance over time" is relevant.

Regards,

Jason

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