Saturday, January 7, 2017

Holy "Moley": The Ceeb's Anti-Israel Spin Never Stops!

The CBC broadcasts anti-Israel propaganda all the time; that, sad to say, is the Mothercorp's default setting. So when the Ceeb's ombudsthingy comes down, at least partially, on the side of an Honest Reporting Canada complaint, it should be cheered.

Maybe.

And a half-hearted cheer is all I'm willing to give to Esther Enkin's ruling re a Derek Stoffel report about the Trudeau government's decision to pour money into UNRWA, funding that had been cut by the previous Conservative government. HRC had suggested that Stoffel (which, fittingly, rhymes with "awful") may have left a crucial bit of info out of his story :
It is true that this was not the main thrust of the larger article, but the way it is phrased can lead to the impression that the funding was withdrawn because the agency was assisting Palestinians in any way. It is too broad to be clear. The Conservatives ended the funding because there were allegations that it was too closely tied to Hamas. I agree some reference to the Conservative government’s concern that UNWRA had ties to Hamas as the reason for ending the funding would be more accurate and would provide context. 
So props to Enkin for stating the obvious--that Stoffel's sin of omission wasn't fair and made the Conservative look bad. But, given the CBC's ingrained anti-Israel bias and how it shows up on nearly a daily basis in Ceeb reportage, it is not something that pro-Israel activists can hope to get rid of. Instead, we end up playing what amounts to an endless game of whack-a-mole, complaining about one calumny only to have another--and another, and another--pop up in short order.

Now, were the Ceeb ombudschick willing to cop to that reality, we might be able to get somewhere.



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