In his recent media tour, Egyptian-American author and anti-Israel activist Omar El Akkad has regularly assailed what he portrays as problematic news media coverage of the Middle East.

In a March 14 interview on Front Burner, a CBC podcast and in conversation with host Jayme Poisson entitled: “Omar El Akkad on Gaza, and ‘breaking up’ with the West,” El Akkad complained about the language in how news media outlets refer to the Hamas-Israel war.

If irony was ever alive, it died during that interview. El Akkad has spent weeks being given an unfettered platform to disseminate his radical anti-Israel agenda with little to no challenge from interviewers and reporters, and then incredibly accuses outlets of a seemingly pro-Israel editorial agenda and bias.

In the last three weeks alone, El Akkad has received extensive, overwhelmingly positive coverage with virtually no background offered to the public about his extensive anti-Israel activism, nor pushback against his extraordinary allegations, in The Toronto Star, The Globe & Mail, Toronto Life, CBC and more.

But that didn’t stop host Jayme Poisson from discussing “some of the real problems” with “media coverage” of the Hamas-Israel war with El Akkad, seemingly oblivious to CBC’s nonstop platforming, not just of El Akkad, but of Front Burner’s repeated and incessant interviewing of anti-Israel guests with virtually no balance offered whatsoever to listeners.

The discussion mentioned Israel seven times and Hamas just once in passing, a microcosm of both Poisson’s and CBC’s inordinate and disingenuous focus on Israel and downplaying of Palestinian terrorism. What Poisson did embellish, however, were anti-Israel protests, referring to “massive student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza,” though one would be hard-pressed to define small demonstrations in both Canada and the United States as “massive.”

Six times throughout the 26-minute interview, El Akkad used the term “genocide” to refer to Israel’s counter-terrorism operations against the Hamas terrorist group. Despite the striking lack of evidentiary support for such outlandish accusations, not once did Poisson ever provide fundamental background, let alone pushback, so listeners could understand that what they were hearing was one individual’s opinion, and nothing resembling fact. However, she failed to do that.

Listeners of Front Burner would hardly be surprised to see such passivity in the face of strident anti-Israel rhetoric from El Akkad. Recently, the radio program has allowed itself to become a clearinghouse for a wide array of anti-Israel guests, ranging from a “freelance journalist” and pro-Hamas mouthpiece Aboubaker Abed (a “reporter” for the Iranian regime’s propaganda arm, Press TV), guests accusing Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” anti-Israel conspiracy theorist Francesca Albanese, and many others – in just the last four months alone.

For his part, El Akkad has spent much of the last 18 months acting as a relentless hostile voice against the Jewish State.

Just weeks after Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacres in southern Israel, El Akkad signed an open letter which denied Israel’s right to exist, and called for the release of all Palestinian prisoners – including convicted terrorists and murderers – from Israeli jails, and in subsequent media interviews, has continued to make unfounded accusations against Jerusalem to highly sympathetic media outlets.

Given CBC’s documented anti-Israel bias over the last 18 months, it is incumbent upon the country’s publicly-funded broadcaster to show good faith and an adherence to journalistic standards by offering a balanced roster of guests on its radio programs. Thus far, it has grossly failed in this regard.