CBC News continues to demonstrate that when it comes to Israel, their ‘journalism’ is typically little more than thinly-veiled stenography for anti-Israel talking points, failing even the most basic tests of critical reporting.
The latest instance of this is a December 10 report from correspondent Tom Parry, “More than 9,000 children in Gaza hospitalized for malnutrition in October, says UN,” where an entire report was devoted to regurgitating allegations from the United Nations agency UNICEF of “malnutrition” in Gaza, without even a second spent challenging these claims.
Click below to watch the segment:
The report began with the host telling viewers that according to UNICEF, aid entering Gaza is “completely inadequate,” before Parry began his report, which featured him saying that UNICEF’s claims are “just one more reminder” that the aid is “not enough.”
There was no acknowledgement that UNICEF’s claims are aggressively denied by Israel, and that all available data tells a very different story. Instead, these allegations were treated as being de facto truthful and factual.
In Parry’s carefully-constructed narrative, aid is entering Gaza, but not nearly enough, causing widespread food shortages, despite substantial evidence to the contrary.
But had he told the full story, he would have shared with viewers that Israel says it has upheld all humanitarian aid requirements as laid out in the ceasefire agreement, and that any shortages are not a product of a lack of aid entering the territory, but theft or redirection taking place afterwards.
Real-life footage from inside Gaza tells a far different story than the one being peddled by CBC News. Full markets, luxury dessert stalls, and even luxury villas are being shown on Gazan social media – a reality that Tom Parry simply ignored. He didn’t acknowledge such realities; instead, he effectively pretended that they do not exist at all, despite their wide circulation online.
Parry’s report also conveniently overlooked accusations recently leveled by Palestinian-American activist Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib that Hamas has systematically stolen infant formula and other nutritional items for children, saying that they had been “storing them in clandestine warehouses” in order to create an artificial shortage inside Gaza.
Alkhatib further noted that the goal in stealing the aid was “to worsen the hunger crisis and initiate a disaster… and force the return of the UN’s aid distribution mechanism,” under which it had been able to steal vast amounts of aid, and resell in order to fill its coffers.
During the war, it was revealed that the Palestinian terrorist group had made hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of stealing aid, creating an artificial shortage, and then reselling it at large markups.
However, rather than presenting a fulsome report about such accusations, or about the reality in Gaza as presented by Gazans themselves, CBC News’ Tom Parry instead took talking points from a United Nations agency, presented them at face value, and ignored any and all voices who could have rebutted those charges.
Tom Parry is quickly making a name for himself as a regular purveyor of anti-Israel talking points devoid of context and even basic balance, and his new report reflects a continuing trend in that direction.
