CBC News journalist Saša Petricic has spent well over a decade producing what we consider to be heavily biased reports about Israel and the Middle East. In his May 27 report, “Strike kills Hamas military chief in Gaza, Israel says,” he reported on the death of a Hamas commander while laying the blame for ceasefire airstrikes solely on Israel.
Watch the full segment below:
Petricic opened by saying “with an extra mood of defiance, Palestinians mourned one of the latest casualties in Gaza. The head of the armed wing of Hamas, Mohammed Odeh.”
Calling Odeh a “casualty” with moving footage of his funeral instantly transformed a senior terrorist commander into something between a victim and a martyr in our view.
Next, he quoted Odeh’s brother denouncing Israel and its “targeted assassination.” At the same time, he told viewers nothing about the terrorist organization Odeh actually led.
“Despite commitments to stop,” Petricic said, “Israeli airstrikes have continued almost daily.” Israel, he said, “blames Hamas” for refusing to disarm as it promised in the ceasefire deal.
This is no empty claim on Israel’s part. It is a verifiable fact. Right after the ceasefire took effect, Hamas began rounding up any weapons, ammunition, explosives, and rockets still left in Gaza. Hamas operatives have also resumed terrorizing and executing Gazan citizens.
Petricic did not mention any of this, instead providing a version of ‘he said, she said.’ And he handed the loudest ‘he said’ – the lion’s share of the airtime – to anti-Israel talking points.
This was supposed to be a news item reporting the death of a terrorist leader. Instead, Petricic gave Hamas as much space and emotional force as possible. He aired three criticisms of Israel, including a UNHCR (United Nations Refugee Agency) spokesperson who blamed Israel, not Hamas, for the humanitarian situation.
He did include one pro-Israel voice, Professor Kobi Michael (mislabeled as Michael Kobi), a senior research fellow with the Institute for National Security Studies. Michael’s perspective was refreshingly clear-eyed: “when you take down experienced people, then they [Hamas] have a problem to run the organization effectively. And now they are almost out of experienced people.”
Next, Petricic showed a clip from Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem: “It won’t stop us,” Qassem told CBC on May 7.
Petricic explained that Qassem was unavailable for a more recent comment because “he has since gone into hiding, fearing for his life.”
That fear seems reasonable. Qassem is a powerful figure, the willing spokesperson for a terrorist organization that murdered, raped, kidnapped, and tortured civilians on October 7, 2023.
After spotlighting Hamas’s defiance, Petricic himself ended on a defiant note, saying, “even today, the Israeli airstrikes continue.” He gave no rationale and instead implied in our estimation that Israel is an irrational aggressor unsated by the defeat of one senior Hamas figure.
Throughout this short but slanted news broadcast, Petricic amplified Hamas grief and defiance while giving Israel a single quote and an oversized helping of unwarranted skepticism.
HonestReporting Canada has documented Petricic’s skewed Israel coverage for CBC News since at least 2013. Over the years, he has misframed Hamas-Israel conflicts to blame Israel and falsely presented a land dispute as “Israel… evict(ing) Palestinian homeowners.”. On multiple occasions (in 2022, 2023, and 2025), CBC has been forced to issue corrections after we called out these errors.
Petricic has had more than enough chances to get this story right. Yet he has failed yet again to do so.
