The CIC challenges CBC

PAUL LUNGEN SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH BULLETIN

The Canada-Israel Committee (CIC) is threatening to take its concerns over what it calls the CBC's "unbalanced" coverage of the Middle East to Parliament and the federal broadcasting regulator.

The CIC said it is considering "directing an effort to get Parliament to revisit the CBC and its mandate and how faithfully they follow that mandate." In addition, the CIC may seek to make a presentation to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), the regulatory body that licenses broadcasters, said CIC chief executive Shimon Fogel.

The tough words came after a "disappointing" response by the national broadcaster to a CIC discussion paper that examined the CBC's Mideast coverage and found it lacked fairness and balance, contrary to the CBC's own reporting guidelines.

The CBC "consistently chooses to ignore the most critical issues and treat them with superficiality," Fogel said.

In a discussion paper presented to senior CBC officials in late October, the Jewish advocacy group said that, while some of the CBC's coverage was fair, much of it lacks balance.

The CIC called on the network to take several measures to make its reporting more even-handed. It urged the national broadcaster to increase the number of "sensitive Israel-related documentaries" it airs, to report on Arab and Muslim intolerance of a Jewish state and to ensure that its Mideast correspondent "provides Israel's perspective in equal measure, and with the same sensitivity, to that of the Palestinians."

It also urged the CBC to ensure that its Mideast correspondents achieve balance within each news report and to clarify the CBC's policy about not using the term "terrorism" and "terrorist" in connection with attacks on Israelis.

CIC officials presented the discussion paper to Harold Redekopp, the CBC's executive vice-president, and Tony Burman, editor-in-chief of CBC News and Current Affairs, at a meeting in late October.

The CBC's response was couriered to the CIC just before the new year. In it, the government-funded network agreed to refer the CIC's complaint about several specific news reports to "our senior journalists" for examination, and it agreed to consider CIC suggestions for previously un-aired documentary topics. But it rejected much of the CIC's criticism of bias.

In a written response to the CIC, Burman stated, "It is important to bear in mind that there are two sides to most stories and the conflict in the Middle East is no exception. It is the duty of CBC Television to inform its viewers across the country about what is happening, without bias or prejudice, and without telling them what to think. We believe it is our obligation to report accurately, fairly and truthfully. Our reporting will not necessarily satisfy all our viewers, but they do have a right to expect that we will be straightforward and honest."

Addressing the CIC's concerns over the failure to use the words "terrorism" and "terrorist" with respect to Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians, Burman wrote: "The CBC's policy about terrorism is not difficult to understand, although I certainly acknowledge it is misunderstood by many in the Canadian Jewish community. And this is because it has been distorted in public comments by Izzy Asper [chair of CanWest Global], by your organization, by the CanWest organization including the National Post and Southam and most recently by newspaper columnist Norman Spector. It [is] hard not to wonder whether this misrepresentation of the CBC's practice is not wilful."

Burman also accused the CIC of orchestrating an e-mail campaign concerning the network's coverage, which generated messages from people who had never seen the CBC's reports and which were "a waste of everyone's time."

Joseph Wilder, national chair of the CIC, said the organization's staff had been following CBC reports on the Mideast for years and their investigation showed the network's unbalanced coverage "wasn't just episodic. It was a pretty well-defined condition that the CBC was biased against Israel."

The CIC was particularly concerned with reportage by the CBC's Mideast correspondent, Neil Macdonald, who it charged has injected personal views in numerous news stories - almost always to Israel's detriment.

Macdonald has been quoted as saying his job is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, Wilder said. "If you analyze that statement, he has to decide in advance who is the afflicted. He has decided the Palestinians are the afflicted ones and he has to comfort them. To us, that's not news reporting."

The CIC asked that the CBC "undertake a review and conduct an analysis of Mr. Macdonald's reports" to investigate complaints that his coverage is not fair or balanced.

The discussion paper examined approximately 40 of Macdonald's reports since January 2002 and found "only seven of these were reflective of Israel's story. Twenty were reflective of the Palestinian story and highly critical of Israel, several extremely so, and 10 were arguably even-handed."

Macdonald's reports from Aug. 13 to Oct. 3 were "particularly egregious," the discussion paper continued. In addition to failing to provide context for events, "Macdonald focused in nine stories from the territories on alleged Israeli mistreatment of Palestinians. Quotes from Israeli officials in each of these reports are more token than substantial and as such do not provide context.... Missing are any stories about alleged Palestinian human rights abuses," such as a failure to report on a decision by the Palestinian journalists' union to ban stories about children being recruited as suicide bombers.

The CBC response relied heavily on two reviews by its ombudsman, David Bazay, who had addressed earlier complaints by two viewers about Macdonald's reportage. The first review was excerpted from the ombudsman's 2001-2002 annual report and dealt only with broadcasts to the end of March 2002. The second was a letter dated June 21, 2002, addressed to Howard Liebman, but that review did not address the CIC's specific complaints of Macdonald's reports of March 2002 and the "egregious" block of reports from Aug. 13 to Oct. 3.

In a letter to viewer George Fleischmann, excerpted from the annual report, Bazay wrote: "I conducted an extensive review of Mr. Macdonald's work, examining more than 40 news items.... I thought it entirely unfair to call Mr. Macdonald's reporting on the conflict 'blatantly one-sided.' Mr. Macdonald told me 'I report what I see on a daily basis and I work deep in the field of the conflict zones, places most people other than Palestinians, Israeli troops or settlers just don't go. I am sorry Mr. Fleischmann doesn't like what I find there.' "

In the second review, dated June 21, 2002, Bazay stated that he examined all items filed by the CBC's Jerusalem bureau between September 2001 and June 2002. "I found CBC's overall coverage in the period under review to be generally well balanced, giving fair and reasonable voice to both the Israeli and Palestinian points of view."

Macdonald was not the only CBC reporter criticized by the CIC. The discussion paper pointed to an Aug. 4, 2002, broadcast of Foreign Assignment, a program that features discussions with the network's reporters stationed abroad, in which Paul Workman acknowledged that one of his reports from Bethlehem did not attempt to achieve balance.

"That wasn't our intention," Workman stated. "Balance, I think, is a larger picture. Our coverage, I'm sure, balances out very well when you add in all the material that comes out of the Middle East."

Wilder said reporters were not the only problem with CBC news coverage. "Dozens are involved in news programs, including people from higher up.... The process goes through many hands."

The CIC, Wilder continued, "found an inherent bias against Israel in the CBC news reporting. We said there was a subculture, a left-of-centre point of reference.

"The entire narrative of the last two years has been distorted by the CBC."

This story originally appeared in the Canadian Jewish News and is reprinted with permission.

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