In repeated instances over the last three years, Globe & Mail Senior International Correspondent Mark MacKinnon’s reporting on the Middle East has been documented by HonestReporting Canada, highlighting its consistent problems.
He has portrayed Israelis as extremists, minimized in our view the threat posed by the Islamic Republic of Iran (but casting aspersions on Israel instead), and appeared in our eyes to blame “colonialism” for Hamas’ desire to destroy Israel.
In addition to his bylines in The Globe & Mail, MacKinnon is a prolific disseminator of content on his X profile which has 93,200+ followers. And while it varies, with much of it discussing the Russo-Ukraine War and U.S. politics, MacKinnon’s frequent posts about the Middle East consistently offer a very narrow perspective for readers in our estimation.
And while his social media activity is not in itself indicative of bias in his reporting, the consistent themes he amplifies do offer a highly curated viewpoint that is also reflected in much of his writings.
Over the course of dozens of re-posts just over the last three months relating to Israel & the Middle East, three consistent themes continue to re-appear.
Click below to view the images:
The first theme paints Israel as the alleged main cause of civilian suffering. Across multiple posts shared by MacKinnon, a consistent theme features coverage of civilian casualties in Gaza or Lebanon, destruction of buildings, and accusations leveled against Jerusalem by critics.
Another consistent image presented to MacKinnon’s followers depicts Israel as being under growing moral isolation, with repeated posts from Canadian government officials, and other stories featuring calls for sanctions against Israel, or Israeli diplomatic setbacks.
Third, MacKinnon has re-posted many stories featuring Israel being internally fractured, with content focusing on political infighting in Israel, social divisions and critics of Israel, both internal and external.
While MacKinnon may argue that his posts do not necessarily reflect his personal viewpoints (“retweets are not endorsements”), but are simply shared out of interest, it is what he has failed to share in recent months that is equally notable. Little, if any, attention is paid to the threat of radical Islamist terrorism, or to the openly genocidal worldview espoused by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies, including Hamas and Hezbollah.
It is also illustrative which users MacKinnon has repeatedly shared. They include New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, whose widely-mocked (and later debunked by animal behaviorists) story alleging Israel trained dogs to rape Palestinian prisoners, Kenneth Roth, who critics say has transformed Human Rights Watch into an anti-Israel platform (and now is an apparent conspiracy theorist), CBC News Senior Reporter Evan Dyer, whose highly problematic reports have been critiqued by HonestReporting Canada, and Ha’aretz, a far-left Israeli news website which critics say has little engagement with the vast majority of Israelis.
MacKinnon’s social media patterns in our view cumulatively create a narrow narrative in which allegations thrown at Israel, and the critics making those claims, are repeatedly amplified, all while the dark forces and ideologies driving much of the region’s instability are often pushed to the margins, and when these actors (like Iran and Hamas) are mentioned at all, they are often framed as reasonable pragmatists.
