The Media Accountability Project  

It may be a sad fact that Palestinians will ultimately have no choice but to bend to American and Israeli diktats in order to stop the genocide against them, but that does not make it right – or in accordance with basic journalistic norms – to report those diktats as though they were banal facts of life. That is an editorial position that has no place in news reporting.

I am concerned about the words that CBC uses in this and other reports to describe the status of the ceasefire that began on October 10. Rarely is any information provided to describe the ways in which the ceasefire has been violated since it began on October 10.

Forced population transfer is a massive violation of international law. The report fails to use clear language such as ethnic cleansing or forced displacement, despite the proposal clearly meeting that threshold. The failure to accurately label the redevelopment plan as such reflects a lack of journalistic precision and normalizes dehumanizing language against Palestinians.

"Every mention of an Israeli death is stated in active voice and Hamas is named as the perpetrator, whereas Palestinian deaths are mentioned in passive voice without assigning blame to Israel."

"While the credentials of the guest were supposed to suffice in presenting a balanced view of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, the interview ended up being one-sided and inaccurate."

"This blockade on both goods and people has strangled Gaza’s economy and collectively punished Palestinians living in Gaza. For this reason, many human rights NGO’s have referred to Gaza as an 'open-air prison.'"

In a CBC article published on June 11, the journalist repeatedly used words like conflict, war, or situation to describe events in Gaza since Oct. 7. Given that the article had, at no point, provided context regarding Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza, CJPME argued that these general terms were rendered empty and useless to the reader. To account for this shortcoming, CBC opted to add a hyperlink to the CBC News page which gives readers access to more context. 

What separates this article from the better part of CBC’s body of reporting is the fact that no context regarding Israel’s genocidal campaign has been provided, thus rendering terms like “conflict” and “war” empty and useless to the reader.

"The emotional and physical cost of the attack on Gaza, as Councillor Tetrault stated, impacts all of us. We need elected officials from all levels of government to act now by calling for a ceasefire and the Burnaby City Council demonstrated just that by their vote."

"The three authors address Israeli and Palestinians losses equally and I think speak for many of us who are neither Jewish nor Palestinian but mourn for "the loss of humanity," including that of the Canadian government which has so far not called for a ceasefire."