Montreal Gazette Adds Context and Quotes from CJPME
On December 3, 2024, CJPME media analyst Lynn Naji sent a letter to the Montreal Gazette regarding their one-sided article titled: “Quebec to probe rising tension at Dawson and Vanier over Israel-Gaza conflict.”
CJPME argued that the article does not provide sufficient context to understand why students at CEGEPs have been protesting on campuses.
Students have been striking in solidarity with the Palestinian movement in Canada. This includes a strategy of academic boycotts, walkouts and demonstrations against Israel's system of apartheid, its ongoing genocide in occupied Gaza and its brutality in the West Bank. The currentacademic boycott movement is also0an extension of the student encampments that occurred over the summer. CJPME argued that the article falls short of providing this necessary context.
Second, the article frames the pro-Palestine protests in a negative light. CJPME argued that the reporting would have been far more balanced had the Gazette included quotes from the student associations involved in the strike, or from an expert on Montreal’s history of student activism. This would have offered a fair, balanced, and more nuanced reporting.
The following day, the article was updated to include the death toll resulting from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and quoted CJPME, debunking the harmful stereotypes that these protests are violent and disruptive.
This added context marks a significant win for CJPME’s Media accountability team which has been pushing for this contextualization of pro-Palestine protests by the Gazette for months. CJPME remains committed to holding Canadian media accountable and pressuring them to stop perpetuating harmful stereotypes surrounding pro-Palestine activism.
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"While I don’t expect the Gazette to include all of this context in their reporting, I do insist that your newsroom tries to avoid perpetuating harmful and reductive narratives that present Palestinians and their supporters as ‘threats,’ while portraying pro-Israel groups as more defensive and self-preserving."
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