As is the case with many CBC radio programs, Day 6, hosted by Brent Bambury, has long provided a sympathetic platform to anti-Israel activists who are given free reign to spread their disinformation with no fear that they might be challenged. That continues to be the case in two recent segments.

On June 13, Day 6 yet again devoted an entire segment to anti-Israel narratives focused exclusively on one side of the story.

The segment entitled: “Documentary chronicles a year of life in Gaza through the eyes of a young photojournalist,” saw Bambury interview filmmaker Sepideh Farsi about her film “Put Your Soul on Your Hand and Walk.”The film is an account of Farsi’s past year which she spent corresponding with now-deceased Gazan woman Fatma Hassona about her experiences living through the war.

Listen to the full segment below:

Farsi describes the film’s goal as her “very personal need” to give attention to what she viewed as a “piece missing” from coverage of the war, namely a “Palestinian voice” sharing the firsthand experience. While Farsi certainly has every right to promote her film and share the experiences of her interview subject, and she made a point of acknowledging the horrors of Hamas’ October 7th attacks against Israel during this interview, Day 6’s handling of this coverage can hardly be considered fair, balanced, or objective.

Day 6 has so consistently devoted its airwaves to one-sided anti-Israel stories, it’s almost impossible to know where to begin to summarize their record. From spreading inflammatory lies about famines, to amplifying hostile rants without challenge, to failing to fact-check basic claims, to platforming unsubstantiated allegations, Day 6’s bashing and implicit message are constant — that Israel is the bad guy, and that the Palestinians are sympathetic victims. 

In this particular interview, Bambury once again sat silently and offered no correction or context when Farsi labeled Israel’s defensive war against Hamas in Gaza as a “genocide,” despite an overwhelming amount of mainstream and credible objection to this characterization that should have at least been mentioned. He similarly failed to probe in any way when Farsi repeatedly shared her Gazan subject’s expressed desire to “resist” — a term that in the context of the Middle East conflict is ubiquitously known to be a euphemism for terrorism, yet to an uninitiated well-meaning listener in Canada could be falsely understood as a sympathetic protest of some sort. On the contrary, rather than moderating the conversation and providing listeners with a better understanding of the nature of the things they’re hearing about, Bambury instead chimes in to editorialize his observation of “how defiant [Hassona] is despite those constraints.”

We hear a vivid description about an “attack on a school that was used as a shelter” and “a child cleaning the blood and flesh of his own people,” yet never are we told that these horrific events are the direct result of Hamas terrorists purposely utilizing Gaza’s civilian infrastructure as their terror bases (including hiding legitimate military targets like rockets, tunnels, terror leaders, and hostages directly inside them), systematically preventing civilians from escaping the line of fire when warned by Israel to do so, and their persistent genocidal efforts to attack and massacre the people of Israel — whose direct personal descriptions would be at least as vivid and gruesome, if not more in some cases. When will Day 6 be devoting a segment to any of these?

Similarly, on June 27, Bambury dedicated a segment to the Iran-Israel war entitled: “How the Israel-Iran war has changed geopolitical dynamics in the region.” His guest was Nader Hashemi, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. In the past, Hashemi has blatantly misrepresented the International Court of Justice (ICJ)’s comments, falsely claiming it accused Israel of genocide.

In Bambury’s introduction, he called the exchange of fire between Israel and Iran “tit for tat strikes,” a significant misrepresentation of what took place. Israel struck nuclear and military sites, while Iran fired at Israeli towns, cities and civilians. During the interview, Hashemi made the illogical statement, prompted by Bambury’s claim that the recent fighting “hastens the nuclear ambitions,” that Tehran would seek nuclear weapons.

According to widely-available intelligence assessments, Iran was already in pursuit of nuclear weapons. Whether they were days, weeks or months away is immaterial, their stockpiling of uranium for a non-nuclear weapons state was “unprecedented,” according to Tulsi Gabbard, the US director of national intelligence.

Hashemi termed the Islamic Republic’s dictators as being “pragmatic voices,” a strange choice of words for theocrats who have decided to spend upwards of half a trillion dollars building a nuclear weapons program. And while Hashemi may well be of those views, it was the show’s host, Brent Bambury, who not only decided to host a guest with a very particular and expected opinion, but made no effort to challenge his statements.

Day 6’s consistent failure to provide journalistic balance not only undermines its credibility, but also does a disservice to Canadian audiences who deserve accurate, fair, and contextual reporting.