On Sunday, September 8, an estimated 25,000 people gathered in Montreal for the March For Jerusalem, organized by Federation CJA.
The walkathon also included a performance by Eden Golan, Israel’s contestant in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest.
But for Montreal’s news media, it’s almost as if the event never happened at all.
Beyond a front-page image of the event in the Montreal Gazette on September 10, there was virtually no other coverage of the walkathon that attracted roughly one in 80 residents of the Island of Montreal, in French-language media, radio, television or from CBC or Radio-Canada, the country’s publicly-funded broadcaster.
The near-total media silence is remarkably reminiscent of how a 50,000-person Walk with Israel event in Toronto in June received scant coverage from print and broadcast news media outlets. And even when coverage was provided, it was brief and was given equal footing with a group numbering in the dozens who were protesting the walkathon.
The clear aversion on the part of Montreal’s news organizations to cover the March For Jerusalem is particularly noteworthy given the extraordinary level of enthusiasm and wall-to-wall coverage of every anti-Israel demonstration taking place in the city, no matter how tiny, fringe and hateful.
Montreal Media Devote Significant Coverage To Anti-Israel Protest Rallies
When a small group of anti-Israel protesters disrupted the Montreal Pride Parade, the stunt was given media coverage by CTV News Montreal, which gave the disrupters uncritical news coverage.
When a tiny collection of demonstrators gathered in downtown Montreal, they were rewarded with a news report for CityNews Montreal which sanitized their extremist views.
This practice, both of giving a platform to miniscule anti-Israel protests, and of whitewashing their radical views, has gone on for many months since Hamas’ October 7 massacres in Israel, even when less than 50 demonstrators are present.
Perhaps the most egregious example of this practice was how media coverage of tiny anti-Israel occupations on university campuses in Montreal, most notably at McGill University, received considerable coverage, much of it completely oblivious to the hateful rhetoric taking place there.
The deliberate choice by Montreal-area news media outlets to give nonstop coverage to anti-Israel protests, no matter how marginal, is curious in itself, made all the more suspicious by the refusal to cover a huge pro-Israel event that is literally hundreds of times larger.
Erasing Pro-Israel Voices From The Discourse
Whether that stunning two-tier reporting is a purposeful effort to erase the voice of pro-Israel Montrealers, rendering them all but invisible to the wider public at large, or is simply a result of a lazy practice where tiny groups of pro-Hamas gangs can garner attention simply because they are loud, is unclear, but ultimately irrelevant.
No matter the motivation, laziness or nefariousness, Montreal’s traditional news outlets, both print and broadcast – just like their peers in Toronto – have shown an eagerness to repeatedly report on even the smallest of anti-Israel protests, yet show virtually no interest in covering a far bigger event in support of Israel.
That suspicious practice should raise serious eyebrows among any Montrealer who wants to be getting real coverage from their news media outlets, and not just the stories that decision-makers want to platform.
