Dear HonestReporting Canada Subscriber, In our September 27 action alert, we informed you about how French-language news portal Canoë had outrageously claimed that Israel was a global menace that “Threatens the World”. To recall, Canoë featured an article on Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who was recently in Canada for a series of meetings and en route to the UN for a showdown over the Palestinian bid for statehood. In comments made to the media, Lieberman threatened “a very strong reaction” should the Palestinian bid go through, yet Canoë claimed Israel and its Foreign Minister “Threatened the World,” using words normally reserved for bellicose nations like Iran and North Korea who are genuine threats to global stability.
HonestReporting Canada appealed to Canoë to retract this offensive and erroneous claim from their online news article. Canoë editors declined to amend their article stating that the responsibility had fallen on the wire services it used, even though the statements were attributable to Canoë itself.
Thanks to the tremendous response of HonestReporting Canada’s members who complained directly to editors at Canoë, the French-language news outlet has commendably retracted this statement from their online news article which now reads as follows:
We congratulate and thank all of our members who sent complaints to Canoë. As this matter clearly demonstrates, each letter can and does make a difference!
Notwithstanding, we are cognisant of the fact that hundreds, if not thousands of people were misled by Canoë into thinking that Israel was “Threatening the World,” a matter which this news outlet has failed to either privately apologize for or publically explain how this matter had come to a fore. It’s regretful that Canoë failed to properly atone for its journalistic transgressions.
