The Media Accountability Project  

On March 12, 2025, CJPME media analyst Anthony Issa submitted a formal letter to Toronto Star, challenging its misleading framing of the October 7 attacks in an article titled “Toronto police apologize to Jewish community after backlash to podcast episode”. The letter criticized the article’s opening claim that “On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked a music festival in Israel”, which falsely suggested that the Nova music festival was the primary target of the attack.

Following CJPME’s intervention, Toronto Star revised the passage to acknowledge that the attack occurred at multiple locations.

The updated version reads:

“On Oct. 7, Hamas attacked a music festival in Israel. A total of 1,200 people were killed and 250 abducted in the attack that day that included other locations including several communities.”

While this correction is a step in the right direction, the article still misleads readers by maintaining the festival as the primary reference point. As reported by Haaretz, Israeli security officials have acknowledged that Hamas did not plan in advance to attack the festival but only learned of it during the assault.

Although the framing is still misleading by overly focusing the events of Oct. 7 on the Nova music festival, we believe this outcome highlights the importance of our work in pushing for proper for ongoing media accountability in Canadian news coverage of Palestine.

CJPME remains committed to ensuring that Canadian media does not distort Israel’s brutal military siege and genocide on the Gaza strip following the events of Oct. 7.

"While it is true that civilians were killed at the Nova music festival, the attack occurred across multiple locations, including military bases and settlements near the Gaza border. By narrowing the focus to a music festival, the article distorts the broader context of the attack and implies that it was solely an assault on a cultural event rather than part of a larger confrontation between Hamas and Israel."