CBC’s History of Double Standards with Palestine
Canada is not only a nation that values immigrants and diversity, but is also a firm upholder of human rights and justice, OR at the very least, this is the image Canada likes to project. In reality however, Canada's true face is far removed from the facade it so commonly presents. Nowhere is this disconnect between Canada's image and reality more pronounced than in Canadian media, and there is no better example of Canadian media than the CBC itself.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation is Canada's largest and oldest national broadcaster. It is also a government owned federal crown corporation who's annual revenue is over half a billion dollars. The CBC is to Canada what BBC is to Britain; it is a part of the very fabric of Canadian identity itself. Throughout its 85 year history, the CBC has been involved in many controversies, including allegations of bias. While most of these allegations are to do with domestic politics, over time it has become clear that this also includes a shocking bias in the CBC’s coverage of international events.
Why is this relevant? Because included in this bias is CBC long history of double standards and silencing of Palestinian narratives. While most media organizations in North America don't claim to be neutral and very clearly lie on one side of the political spectrum, the CBC, in stereotypically Canadian fashion, prides itself on its supposedly neutral stance and ability to speak from the middle. This does not actually hold up to reality. In truth, CBC news broadcasts have continuously favoured Israel, going as far as having specific policies in place to ensure that news that shows Palestine as a victim or Israel as the aggressor are censored.
Within the last year alone, there have been countless instances of this erasure.
1. Censoring the name of Palestine: On the 18th of August 2020, on the CBC Radio’s “The Current '' podcast, anchor Duncan McCue used the word "Palestine" on air while listing a few countries in a conversation with his guest speaker Joe Sacco. The next day, on August 19th, he unexepectedly issued an apology, “Yesterday, in my interview with Joe Sacco, I referred to the Palestinian territories as ‘Palestine’. We apologize".
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-aug-19-2020-1.5691734/aug-19-2020-episode-transcript-1.5692215
(22:47)
At CBC, even the mere mention of the word Palestine isn't allowed, let alone talk about the occupation of its people. Let’s take a moment to understand this fully. The mention of the word Palestine, or the insinuation of its existence, was deemed so inappropriate, it required a formal apology. This inability to even use the word without being censored justifiably shocked the community and was widely criticized. As a result, there was a mass email campaign against the CBC to hold it accountable. While the CBC did respond, they didn't respond with an apology, rather they responded with a clarification. According to them, their language policy states that "there is no modern country of Palestine, although there's a movement to establish one as part of a two-state peace agreement with Israel. Areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority are considered Palestinian territories: Fatah-run West Bank and Hamas-run Gaza Strip".
Now as much as we find this disrespectful, since the CBC is a government owned corporation, it is understandable that it has a natural duty to hold views that are consistent with Canada's own foreign policy. If this was the case, then although disappointing, and warranting separate criticism, we still see where the CBC is coming from.
But here's the thing though, the CBC only refrains from using the name of a country that Canada doesn't recognize IF THAT COUNTRY IS PALESTINE. It doesn't actually do the same with other unrecognized countries, who's name it doesn't mind using openly.
If we look at the mention of Taiwan or Somaliland, two other countries that Canada does not recognize, you're instantly taken to a page with tens if not hundreds of articles with the name of the countries in the title itself.
Why does this double standard exist only for Palestine? If anything, Palestine is a universally recognized sovereign state by over 138 countries, an observer state at the UN, maintains diplomatic missions in Canada (who's embassy ironically lies less than a 10 minute away from the CBC headquarters in Ottawa), and the Palestinian passport is even accepted during entry at Canadian airports.
So again, this begs the question; why only Palestine? Why is only Palestine treated so differently?
This is only the beginning, let's now talk about how the CBC goes to great lengths to shelter Israel from criticism
2. Censoring the HRW report against Israel: On the 27th of April 2021, the Human Rights Watch published a comprehensive and robust report detailing Israel's crimes against Palestinians, which even concluded that Israel indeed fulfilled the criteria to be an apartheid state. Like all other ground breaking stories, all the major news agencies in the West got an advanced copy of the report on April 26 (one day earlier) so that they could get a story out in time of the report being made public. While news agencies around the world covered this news with great debate, there was virtually no mention of this in Canada. Not a single article or mention of this was made by the CBC.
This of course did not go unnoticed and the CBC were sent emails asking them to explain their silence. Their response read "We discussed coverage of this story for our broadcast and Digital platforms today, but in the end a decision was made that we do not have the reporter resources on this day to devote to it … we just couldn’t make that work".
Somehow, Canada's largest and most important news agency, a literal Crown corporation that has billions of dollars of funding that has over 100 online outlets, a streaming service, journalists spread across the globe could not find a single reporter to cover this, they "just couldn't make it work". Further, when Toronto based writer Andrew Mitrovica wrote individual emails to the CBC journalists themselves asking them for a clarification of why they chose not to cover this globally important news, they all deferred him to CBC's PR who responded saying he"there was no edict (nor would there ever be on any story) from anyone within CBC News not to cover this report. Every day, across the service, our program teams make independent, editorial decisions as to what they will cover on their respective shows”. What this basically means is that CBC acknowledges that it did not talk about the HRW report, but insists that it was not a deliberate thing its journalists were specifically instructed to avoid, but rather by coincidence everyone individually and unanimously agreed to not talk about this because it was not important enough.
A line of protestors hold up signs and flags outside the CBC Ottawa Production Centre in downtown Ottawa. [Photo by Wafa El-Rayes]
