CSNews OPINION: Misconceptions re: Palestinian News Coverage
Solution Needed for DISINFORMATION BY OMISSION
BACKGROUND: Media Censorship leads to Widespread Misconceptions re: Palestinian Advocacy
A few of these are listed here:
Those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians are supporters of Hamas.
Because Hamas was designated a terrorist organization in the past, it continues to be nothing but a terrorist organization now.
Every Palestinian male is a member of Hamas and that thereby targeting civilians is justified.
Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas members, because Hamas denies Israel's right to exist.
The events of October 7, 2023 were correctly reported on in the media. (I.e Hamas is to blame for the greatest loss of Jewish life on a single day since the Holocaust.)
Violence seen on campuses and in streets where pro-Palestinian protests occur is proof of Palestinian violence and reason to deport protestors.
People who speak out against Israeli government actions are anti-semitic and should be charged with hate crime offences.
Misconceptions such as these may arise from one-sided reporting whenever government backed, corporate funded and independent media platforms neglect their ethical responsibility to provide a range of viewpoints. Media ethics guidelines, such as the Global Declaration on Information Integrity Online state media are to “Promote and respect pluralistic media and journalism, and protect access to media content as one measure to counter disinformation.” This indicates that having a plurality of media GUARDS AGAINST DISINFORMATION!! In that Canadian and other purveyors of news have not generally sought to include information from a range of viewpoints, Canadians have been subjected to Disinformation by Omission.
The Canadian Shareable News Press Room seeks to help journalists access perspectives they may have been missing in their reporting. Here, once again are the above misconceptions with commentary coming from under-reported sources to help restore balance in reporting.
(1) Those who advocate for the rights of Palestinians are supporters of Hamas —> One can advocate against harms done to civilians without any political motive. Apolitical advocacy has always been at the heart of humanitarian efforts.
(2) Because Hamas was designated a terrorist organization in the past, it continues to be nothing but a terrorist organization now. —> Canada designated Hamas as a terrorist organization in 2002 over 20 years ago. The recent 2021 'review' of this designation did not take into account the current role Hamas plays in Palestinian society. The recent fast tracked designation of pro-Palestinian advocacy events organizers Samidoun (Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network) bypassed the House committee that normally deals with these matters. And recent discussion re: Canada lifting its terrorist designation of the US-backed Al-Qaeda affiliated group now purportedly running the government in Syria demonstrates that ‘terrorist designations’ are often political tools, not justice-based instruments, used by governments at will. In other words, a fair re-evaluation of the current situation of Hamas could lead to the lifting of Canada's designation, if the political will were in place. How nations like Canada classify the organization should not play a role in understanding the events on the ground. Political will can only be developed if reporting is honest.
(3) Every Palestinian male is a member of Hamas and that thereby targeting civilians is justified. —> Local and independent journalists like Marwa Osman and Vanessa Beeley (who are generally not heard from on Canadian mainstream media platforms) explain that because Hamas has long been the organization that makes civil society function (running the postal service, the various government social services, etc., across the country) nearly every family has members employed in non-military as well as military aspects of Hamas. Not every man is a member of the military. To get a sense of their reporting, Canadians can visit:
Attacking "Hamas" bases, for example with exploding pagers, has meant attacking mostly civilians, i.e. women working in schools, government offices, etc.
(4) Israel has the right to defend itself from Hamas members, because Hamas denies Israel's right to exist. —> Two aspects of that statement are not being correctly reported: Firstly, the international rules and principles for occupying powers differ from rules governing other nations. Israel clearly is an occupying power, and it has long been in clear violation of the principles of the Legal Framework of Occupation in International Armed Conflict. https://thelaw.institute/understanding-ihl/legal-framework-occupation-armed-conflict/. Occupiers do not have the right to defend themselves against the reaction of the occupied if they do not follow their own legal obligations of maintaining civil society among the occupied. Secondly, since 2017, Hamas has no longer been threatening the existence of Israel. There has been a revision of their former position. Hamas will accept the existence of Israel within its June 4,1967 borders. This would mean Jewish control of most of Jerusalem, but a withdrawal of Israel management of East Jerusalem, which has been under Israeli control since the Arab-Israeli War of 1967. In 2007, they clarified an expectation that Israel withdraw to within its original 1967 borders. This means they do not deny Israel’s existence but they will continue to advocate against what they referred to in 2017 to as Israel’s “racist, aggressive, colonial and expansionist” Zionist project. We are observing more members of the current Israeli government referencing their support of the ‘greater Israel project’ which would be in clear violation of the national sovereignty of many of its neighbours—Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Egypt (for a total of approximately 650,000 sq. miles). Israel’s recent involvement in overthrowing the Syrian government has allowed Israel to now occupy territories in Syria that align with their expansionist vision.
Also not reported is the presence of large quantities of off shore oil and gas off the coast of Gaza, another motivation for the government of Israel to push Palestinians out of Gaza in order to have full access to these resources. Any reports on the violence in Gaza that leave out this possible motive are incomplete.
Likewise, any reports that do not include the construction of a $35.8 million US troop facility in Israel’s Negev desert, 20 miles from Gaza started two months BEFORE October 7, 2023. https://iacenter.org/2023/11/15/behind-israels-end-game-for-gaza-theft-of-offshore-gas-reserves/
(5) The events of October 7, 2023 were correctly reported on in the media. (I.e Hamas is to blame for the greatest loss of Jewish life on a single day since the Holocaust.) —> Remember the movie “Wag the Dog”? Media propaganda around October 7 continues to be rampant and unchallenged publicly. Compare the immediate coverage with that coming out a few days later, after detailed investigation, for example by independent journalists at the Grayzone.
(6) Violence seen on campuses and in streets where pro-Palestinian protests occur is proof of Palestinian violence and reason to deport protestors. —> Reports of violence at pro-Palestinian protests are problematic in two ways. Firstly, if they do not acknowledge the existence of black bloc protestors (i.e. infiltrations of those attempting to discredit the purpose of the protest) and secondly, if they only report on selected portions of the protests (i.e. those with staged violence). The recent coverage of "Montreal burns while the PM danced" was a case in point. Montreal police declared that those vandals who set fire to cars within a two block radius, were NOT aligned with the organizers of a pro-Palestinian event (Désinvestir pour la Palestine) or with the Counter-Summit Against NATO’s Parliamentary Assembly in Montreal also underway that weekend. Instead they are known as ‘professional protestors’ who have disrupted a range of events in the past. Meanwhile, with all the focus on the footage of burning vehicles, there was no mainstream coverage of the actual conference meant to draw attention to the problematic issues around Canada's involvement in NATO and with governments and institutions supporting Israel’s attacks on Palestinians. (See https://canadianshareablenews.substack.com/p/csnews-week-36-november-26-2024-vol ).
Many of the campus sit-ins last summer were likewise overtaken by those wishing to discredit what would be well-intentioned advocacy events. Mainstream and alternative media alike need to do due diligence before adding fuel to the fire of further division in Canadian society. It appears that when the focus of reporting moves to discord and disruption, the intended purpose or actual message behind advocacy events is sidelined. Weapon makers who profit off the loss of human life continue to do so. While some are seeking to prevent the usage of Canadian made weapons against Palestinians, for wars to be halted, in order for Parliamentarians to put a stop to political violence, the voices of all parties need to be heard.
(7) People who speak out against Israeli government actions are anti-semitic and should be charged with hate crime offences. —> Canadian media report a purported "rise in antisemitism" in Canada without reporting an expansion of the definition of anti-semitism. Increasingly, more municipal, provincial and federal government departments are integrating the NON-BINDING definition drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance into their policies. This now comes with the the long list of illustrative examples being published by the Government of Canada. As a result, even academic analysis of Zionist policies coming out of the current Israeli government administration risks being flagged as problematic and ‘anti-semitic’. See www.cjpme.org/stop_ihra_handbookwww.canada.ca/en/canadian-heritage/services/canada-holocaust/antisemitism/handbook-definition-antisemitism.html#a6c. It is a vicious cycle... the more 'cases' the more ‘expanded vigilance', the more ‘expanded vigilance' the more ‘cases.’
A SOLUTION ?
Currently, many Canadian Media Ethics guidelines exist. Some are listed here. But there seems to be a clear lack of accountability to ensure that news media platforms follow these ethics. A solution could be ensuring that all media platforms with a reach above a certain threshold are OBLIGATED to report more than one viewpoint freely and openly. Where that obligation already exists constitutionally, with Canada’s official public broadcaster, the CBC, one could follow the lead of Germany. In that country, legal actions are starting to get underway against government funded media outlets that do NOT abide by the obligation to provide balanced coverage. https://canadianshareablenews.substack.com/p/15-questions-re-media-ethics-being
Clearly, organizations that are tasked with ensuring that Canadian media follow the CAJ Ethics Guidelines (for example, the Canadian Association of Journalists’ Ethics Advisory Committee) have taken insufficient action to guard against misconceptions born out of information by omission among its membership.
Clearly also, journalism schools are part of the problem as they teach their students to avoid ‘both-sideism’ and to “reject objectivity as a tenet of journalism.” New journalists are given advice like this comment against giving equal weight to multiple sides of contentious issues: “This misguided pursuit of balance sets up a false equivalence, a form of specious reasoning in which two sides are treated as the same when they are not.” The problem here is that it leaves it to journalists themselves to decide to close themselves off against the potential validity of arguments that they have not yet encountered.
We have spent over 40 weeks amplifying un- and under-reported news to Canadians via a SMALL PDF/Substack weekly newsletter. If they were to encounter the stories we link to, beginning journalists accustomed to following only a certain set of interpretations of key issues might reject the stories we find, relegating them to the “misinformation pile”.
Instead, journalists should follow a story where it leads and purposely seek out voices whose interpretations of events contradicts the “mainstream” until an expectation for balance and for diverse perspectives is once again a hallmark of what it means to be a “MAINSTREAM” journalist. One-side reporting that leaves out opposing viewpoints and does NOT ‘follow the money’ and is often plagued with conflicts of interests should be called out as propaganda only. Hopefully then, we will be spared harmful misconceptions and wars like the one in Palestine would be nipped in the bud or not even allowed to erupt in the first place.
Hannah Noerenberg, B.Ed, M.Ed Public Educator
Interesting. Now please do similar review of ethical journalism on the safety and efficacy of mRNA covid vaccines.