On March 15, CJPME learned that the Vancouver Sun corrected an article following a CJPME complaint. In an article about how a children’s tent at a rally for Gaza has supported Palestinian-Canadian parents, Denise Ryan wrote the following:
Sama said that when Israel invaded Gaza following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel, Yafa knew something was happening.
CJPME wrote a letter to the journalist and the editor-in-chief asking whether Sama called it a terrorist attack in her testimony or whether the journalist made this moral judgment herself. If Sama called it a terrorist attack in her own testimony, then that needs to be made clear by putting those words in quotation marks. In any other case, the Hamas attacks should not be broadly labeled as “terroristic” in a news article. Further, despite the article providing readers with the Israeli death toll, no information regarding how many Palestinians have been killed by Israel was included. After the Deputy Editor of the Vancouver Sun admitted that the reporter was working within a limited word count, they opted to remove the portion about Hamas’ attack, as well as the Israeli death toll, to avoid imbalanced reporting. The sentence now reads:
Sama said that when Israel invaded Gaza after October 7, Yafa knew something was happening.
CJPME appreciates the Vancouver Sun’s prompt response and willingness to make corrections to their published articles.