On Thursday, February 26th, HR Canada Charitable Organization hosted a timely, substantive, and at times challenging conversation about the idea of the newsroom activist.

Over the past year, HR Canada Charitable Organization undertook a large-scale, data-driven study of CBC coverage of the Israel–Hamas war. Using artificial intelligence to analyze thousands of articles over a 20-month period, the research examined long-term patterns in the outlet’s coverage.

What the study raised — and what we’ve heard echoed by journalists, policymakers, and members of the public since its release — is a deeper concern: when coverage consistently pulls audiences toward moral conclusions, at what point does journalism stop observing conflict and begin participating in it?

To help answer that question, HR Canada Charitable Organization was joined by two people whose experience spans decades and speaks directly to these questions.

The webinar was hosted by Peter Kent. Peter spent four decades as a journalist, working as a reporter, producer, and anchor for CBC, CTV, Global, and NBC News, covering conflicts across the globe — from Vietnam and Cambodia to Central America, Africa, and the Middle East. He reported from the front during the Yom Kippur War, worked extensively out of NBC’s Tel Aviv bureau, and witnessed firsthand many of the defining geopolitical moments of the late twentieth century.

Following his journalism career, Peter served thirteen years in federal politics, including as Minister of State for Foreign Affairs and Minister of the Environment. He was a member of the Canadian Parliamentary Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, the Canada/Israel Committee, and previously served on the board of Honest Reporting Canada.

Sitting down with Peter was our guest, Yaakov Katz. Yaakov is an author, journalist, and senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute, as well as the co-founder of MEAD, the premier Middle East–America policy forum. From 2016 to 2023, he served as Editor-in-Chief of The Jerusalem Post, where he continues to write as a columnist. He also writes for the Jewish Chronicle, hosts the JPPI podcast, and appears regularly on CNN and the BBC as an Israel analyst.

Yaakov is the co-author of While Israel Slept: How Hamas Surprised the Most Powerful Military in the Middle East, a national bestseller in the United States, as well as three previous books examining Israeli security and regional conflict. Prior to his role at The Jerusalem Post, he served as a senior policy adviser to Naftali Bennett during his tenure as Israel’s Minister of Economy and Minister of Diaspora Affairs.