How deep is the rot at CBC?

Despite CBC repeatedly claiming that the publicly-funded broadcaster harbors no ideological agenda, there continues to be evidence suggesting a disturbing, almost incestuous, relationship between CBC News and anti-Israel radicals, to which the publicly-funded broadcaster has shown no particular interest in addressing.

Shireen Ahmed is a CBC News Senior Contributor who, in 2023, after the October 7, 2023 massacres in Israel, signed an open letter calling for more pro-Palestinian content in the news media. Since then, she has used her platform to do precisely that, authoring multiple articles that coincidentally align with her stated pro-Palestinian worldview, including one suggesting Israel be expelled from the Olympics.

Even when writing articles that have nothing to do with Israel, such as a 2021 column about sports, she managed to shoehorn in accusations of racism against Israelis.

In the days before the kickoff of the FIFA Congress in Vancouver, Ahmed penned an article airing grievances by Palestinian officials that their delegation might not be able to attend, as they had not yet received their visas in time.

In her article, Ahmed conveniently omitted mentioning that the head of that delegation, Jabril Rajoub, is a convicted Palestinian terrorist and terror glorifier. She also quoted Kat Vilarev, who she termed “a sports law expert,” but is in fact the legal counsel for the Palestinian football team, in a blatant misrepresentation.  

Following Ahmed’s thinly-veiled promotional article for the Palestinian football club, an extremist anti-Israel group called Just Peace Advocates (which has targeted Jewish schools and summer camps for deregulation from the Canada Revenue Agency) excitedly sharing Ahmed’s social media post announcing that the terrorist-led Palestinian delegation would be arriving after all.

On social media, Ahmed gave a play-by-play of the FIFA Congress, where Rajoub refused to shake the hands of Israel’s representative, an Arab-Israeli named Basim Sheikh Sulaiman.

On her X (Twitter) account, she devoted multiple posts to quoting and featuring Rajoub – who spent 17 years in prison for throwing a grenade at a group of soldiers – appearing to characterize him as something of a hero.

Ahmed then took to social media to share a post from a user who claimed it was “deeply unsettling” that the head of FIFA was “treating genocide like it can be solved with a handshake and a camera.”

Beyond helping to shape public opinion at CBC News, Ahmed is also a contract lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU)’s School of Journalism, which recently hosted a panel discussion featuring an unabashed glorifier of Palestinian terrorism.

When Marie-Phillipe Bouchard, the president of CBC/Radio-Canada, appeared at a House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage on April 23, she was grilled by parliamentarians about CBC’s documented and extensive anti-Israel bias, which she waved away dismissively, claiming that “I don’t believe that our reporters are pursuing a particular agenda.”

That agenda, driven by activists like Shireen Ahmed, is beyond doubt, and continues to harm whatever journalistic integrity remains at CBC News. What will it take for Canada’s publicly-funded broadcaster to finally admit to its out-of-control pro-Palestinian agenda?

Photo credit: Shireen Ahmed