The Hamas-Israel war has brought new conflict between the Conservative Party of Canada politicians and CBC news.
The Conservatives have vowed to defund CBC television and its new operations if elected, and have been frequent critics of its coverage of Canadian politics and world events.
At a parliamentary committee meeting in October, Conservative MPs took aim at its reporting on the Middle East war. MPs Rachel Thomas and Melissa Lantsman slammed the public broadcaster for not unequivocally characterizing Hamas as a terrorist organization.
At issue was CBC’s guidance to its journalists to avoid the use of “terrorist” except where quoting interviewees or statements from others. The Canadian Press, the Associated Press, the BBC, and many other organizations follow these same guidelines.
The Canadian government has designated Hamas as a terrorist organization, as have the U.S., U.K. and other western governments. The Hamas attack on Oct. 7 in southern Israel in which they murdered civilian men, women and children would clearly meet the definition of a “terrorist attack.”
There is clearly a legitimate debate about the journalistic practice However, the Conservative MPs went beyond the pale in their criticism of CBC.
Thomas told colleagues in a parliamentary committee that for CBC not to label Hamas a terrorist organization means the corporation is on the “side of terrorists” and “against the Jewish population.”
Lantsman, the party’s deputy leader, challenged the journalistic integrity of the broadcaster. In essence, these two MPs – and by extension their party – are attempting to turn the CBC into a vassal of the state, which is the very thing they accuse the public broadcaster of being when they label it as state run media.
When politicians attack critical journalists and the media outlets with which they disagree, they exacerbate the worrying trend for citizens to gather in opposing camps. The result is unbridled hate speech; rising racism and religious and ethnic intolerance.
The MPs introduced a motion to call senior CBC news managers before the committee to censure them for their editorial policies, an effort that was defeated by Liberal, NDP and Bloc MPs.
World Press Freedom Canada believes it would be a gross interference in editorial independence to have a parliamentary committee dictate the CBC’s editorial policy.
Accusing CBC of being aligned with terrorists also heightens the risk that its journalists – including those working on the ground in the Middle East – will be targeted by angry and perhaps violent partisans.
Increasingly journalists in Canada are being called out by elected officials during press conferences for stories they have done, or for the news organizations they represent.
When politicians attack critical journalists and the media outlets with which they disagree, they exacerbate the worrying trend for citizens to gather in opposing camps. The result is unbridled hate speech; rising racism and religious and ethnic intolerance.
We all need to respect the line between disagreement and angry division in order to maintain a healthy Canadian democracy.
