CBC has whitewashed Israel’s crimes in Gaza. I saw it firsthand
JVL Introduction
Molly Schumann worked for a public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation for five years.
She shows in great detail how discrimination against Palestinians is embedded in the very structure of reporting practice in the Corporation.
Before October 7 it was expressed in a lack of interest in good stories, such that it hadn’t take Schumann “long to realize that the subject of Israel-Palestine was to be avoided wherever possible”.
“After October 7, I dreaded going into work: every shift, the impact of the biases went into overdrive. Even at this early stage, Israeli officials were making genocidal statements that were ignored in our coverage.”
It soon became clear that Palestinian stories and interviewees were treated with suspicion at best, with a need for caveats to be inserted in advance in ways that didn’t happen with other stories. Double standards abounded. Live interviews with Palestinians were shunned because they couldn’t be censored.
Schumann eventually resigned at the end of November, “relieved that I was no longer complicit in the manufacturing of consent for a genocidal war of revenge”.
RK
This article was originally published by The Breach on Thu 16 May 2024. Read the original here.
CBC has whitewashed Israel’s crimes in Gaza. I saw it firsthand
Working for five years as a producer at the public broadcaster, I witnessed the double standards and discrimination in its coverage of Palestine—and experienced directly how CBC disciplines those who speak out
Loading article text…
Excellent work we need more of this. People will recognise it as it is a chronic issue and may wake up. It is the only reason such a nefarious agenda has been able to metastatize. Up until recently only political activists, and some minorities living in Western countries really understood the extent to which this sort of thing goes on. I was surprised a few days ago when I recounted an analogous tale from the UK to my Moroccan neighbour here, at the end of which I expressed my disgust that so many at the time knew exactly what was really going on but played along and stayed silent. He really surprised me when he said those people staying silent knew they had no choice. A Moroccan building worker who has never left his country knows this. The idea that there is fair play in the West is collapsing. It may have had some credence at some point. There is still a strong current of fair mindedness in the UK, upheld by people like Peter Oborne, irrespective of their economic political stance. But it is in danger of withering now. And with it the “soft power” of the Western world. Destroyed by the compliance of people without work security living in a debt trap.
All the best journalists on the planet are on our side….. the side of truth and integrity and authenticity.
This is a remarkable and informative account of overt, covert and unthinking bias and censorship in a generally respected major broadcaster. It is hard not to think that the same applies to many broadcasters here in the UK. A question is ….why this behaviour? Apart from those journalists and hosts described by Molly Schumann as being prepared to defend Israel’s line at any cost I have to assume that the remainder of the managers and executives are scared of something? Kick back? Public criticism? If so, from whom exactly??? What exactly is it that creates this automatic (western) culturally based traducing of good journalism?
Thanks for this spine-chilling ground-floor explanation of how such news distortion and censorship work in practice … even when the news topic is about well-documented, ongoing genocide and the news presenter is a relatively decent organisation.
I think the time is right now for an international probe by angry journalists themselves into how the masses of western journalists and editors were STEERED INTO becoming the facilitators of ethnic cleansing. As well as naming the guilty parties and practices, they’d need to tell us all what changes in media organisation and media laws must happen to prevent similar wrong-doing in the future.
It’s the right time to act because those politically responsible for the atrocities we see are self-evidently much weaker, more embattled and more divided than they were. The world’s publics are much better informed and assertive than they were. There are far more media people, diplomats and politicians angry about the betrayal of their professional / ethical standards and prepared to act against those who have misled us all.
We also know who might be prepared to act as “umbrella” bodies / communicators in a campaign like this. The first three that come to my mind, for example, are the South African government; the UN website; and “Al Jazeera”.
As you read this article you can substitute CBC with BBC.. I’ve spent decades watching BBC whitewash Israel and any retaliation by Palestine was curated to seem as unprovoked terrorism by Palestinians on ” poor victim ” Israel.. I eventually boycotted BBC ‘NEWS’ after its campaign against Corbyn and its seemingly Leave Campaign during the Brexit Referendum.. where they constantly reported about immigration out of control.. jobs under threat etc etc.. and even now reading the headlines online they’re still pushing a certain narrative from the Right Wing perspective.. not surprising seeing where the Top Brass are from.. Establishment Protectors of the Gravy Train to a T..