A February 5 CBC News report depicted student protestors who were charged with trespassing after occupying a campus building at Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN), as innocent victims and downplayed their alleged harassment of fellow students and staff. It also platformed their baseless “genocide” claims against Israel without any challenge or context.

 The report, by journalist Abby Cole, reported on the upcoming trial of the student trespassers, but failed to explain why they were protesting in the first place. Just days earlier, Cole had produced another piece on another small anti-Israel protest in St. John’s, seemingly acting as the group’s de facto beat reporter. Even as far back as November 2023, Cole co-wrote a piece published in Concordia University’s The Link campus newspaper, which whitewashed a recent anti-Israel mob.

In her February 5 report, Cole covered the story of anti-Israel protesters who took over a building at MUN in May, 2024.

They later moved outdoors to a tent encampment. They demanded that MUN divest from Israel due to their claims of there being an “ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people,” according to protestor Sadie Mees at the time.

In her broadcast, CBC reporter Cole let Mees repeat this baseless claim unchecked. She failed to inform viewers that no international body has actually made a determination of genocide. The false Amnesty International claims against Israel, for example, are based on a bizarre definition of genocide, their own definition that they had to create to make this allegation.

Cole quoted Mees at length, along with another student protestor and their lawyer. Yet not once did she quote a pro-Israel or Jewish student organization about how the campus takeover affected them, or anyone else disrupted by the demonstration. Cole did point out that MUN “didn’t want students sleeping on campus after hours and that their main concern was safety,” but she did not acknowledge that protestors violated campus rules and safety regulations.

Cole also missed an even bigger story. MUN’s student union (MUNSU) has been hijacked by activist groups pushing agendas like boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS).

As one student has pointed out, “MUNSU has become a political organization that disguises itself as a student activist group in order to expropriate the resources students give them (i.e. platforms and funding) to further their own political agendas – not represent students.”

Meanwhile, campus protests disrupt students just trying to get an education.

MUN isn’t alone. Student unions all over Canada and the U.S. have been similarly co-opted by anti-Israel activist groups. These groups are often backed by extensive international funding. In the U.S., there is growing concern over Qatari funding of campus activities. Recent reports indicate that over $1.95 billion USD has been donated to Cornell University. Canadian institutions, too, have received Qatari funding.

So-called “grassroots” campus protests here may also have hidden international backing. That makes students like Mees useful pawns in a bigger Middle Eastern chess game that’s costing both Israeli and Palestinian lives.

By overlooking all of this, Cole failed in her basic responsibility as a journalist to tell the full story. She’s left out the complete context viewers need to understand this story. And ignored deeper, more troubling truths behind these protests that the Canadian public needs to know.