Fighting for fair coverage of Palestine

 

I remember the first few weeks of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. I lost weight and I couldn’t take care of myself or my baby. Being far away in Canada, I couldn’t close my eyes at night out of fear my loved ones in Gaza would be killed while I was asleep. Eventually, they were. 

I followed the news closely every day and night. It was shocking (yet also expected) how Western outlets treated information from Israeli sources compared to Palestinian ones. Two different standards for fact-checking. 

For instance, major Western outlets like CNN published the now debunked lie that Hamas beheaded Israeli babies in October without evidence from Israeli officials, and others like CBC, the National Post, the Toronto Star, and the Toronto Sun didn’t challenge the lie when it came up in their reporting. Later the same month, the Gaza Health Ministry reported that over 7,000 Palestinians were killed and many of those same outlets instilled doubt in readers about the death toll by including that the ministry is “Hamas-run.” To counter this, the ministry released a list of names of martyrs to prove those numbers were real people. 

I know why this is. In my years in the newsroom of a major Canadian news organization, I witnessed the so-called “editorial standards” that work to silence Palestinian voices and uplift Israeli ones. The process of learning about those “standards” was painful and I always felt conflicted about being part of the system. Over time, it became too unethical to stay in.

Behind Western media’s distorted coverage of Israel and Palestine is a mix of deep ignorance, pro-Israel bias, anti-Palestinian racism, white supremacy, and media’s refusal to change. During my years as a video journalist with Global News, I educated my colleagues about Palestine, brought Palestinian voices on air, and provided the company with translation and contextual and historical facts. I tried to bring in change and challenge the biased status quo. But after posting on social media in solidarity with Palestinians in October 2023, I was fired.  (more...)

Fighting for fair coverage of Palestine