According to CBC News’ own journalistic standards, responsible journalism means “invest(ing) our time and our skills to learn, understand and clearly explain the facts to our audience.”

Unfortunately, in our view, that was not what was offered to Canadians in an August 20 CBC News report by Saša Petricic and Ivan Angelovski, “As Israel’s military advances its yellow line, Gazans fear they’re being pushed to the sea,” or an accompanying broadcast the same day, “Israel’s yellow line is moving, pushing Palestinians closer to the sea.”

Watch the full clip below:

CBC News says its visual investigations team used satellite imagery, eyewitness testimony and footage from freelancers in Gaza to document movement of the so-called yellow line separating Israeli-controlled and Palestinian-controlled areas.

The article notes that it was produced with files from Mohamed El Saife, a videographer who has posted anti-Israel propaganda to social media, though this has not precluded Canada’s taxpayer-funded broadcaster from continuing to utilize him as a prism with which millions of Canadians read about Gaza. The broadcast similarly cites its use of “freelancers” on the ground.

In these reports, rather than simply show where Israeli forces are operating, CBC News repeatedly used loaded language to advance a particular interpretation of why Israel is acting and where those actions are leading.

The written headline says Gazans fear they are being “pushed to the sea,” but the accompanying video description goes further, declaring that Israel’s yellow line is “moving, pushing Palestinians closer to the sea.” The broadcast claims Palestinians are in a “scramble for survival,” an odd choice of language since 99.95 percent of Gazans have survived the last year’s ongoing skirmishes.

Inside the story, readers are told that Israeli troops are “creeping west,” “squeezing two million Palestinians into an ever smaller area” and “forcing a scramble for survival toward the Mediterranean Sea.”

Those are not quotations from Palestinians, but CBC News’ own words.

There is nothing improper about interviewing Palestinians who have been displaced or reporting their fears. But journalism should distinguish those fears from conclusions independently established by reporters. Instead, the article repeatedly allowed the two to merge.

One Palestinian quoted in the article claims Israeli tanks came “day after day to shoot at us.” Another says, “every day, we see more gunfire, to advance the yellow line.” Yet Petricic and Angelovski provide little indication that it attempted to establish if the event happened, why Israeli forces would be firing, whether hostile activity was taking place nearby, or how the interviewees could know the military purpose behind that fire.

The article and video broadcast devote considerable attention to buildings demolished by Israeli forces, saying homes have been “systematically flattened” since the ceasefire.

Both reports cite a UN commission condemning Israel for its operations on the ground, claiming it is deliberately trying to force Gazans to leave.

What receives far less attention is Israel’s explanation. Both reports do quote the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) saying its measures are intended to “prevent infiltrations and hostile activity” and protect troops and nearby Israeli communities.

But that raises obvious questions CBC News does little to answer. What hostile activity is occurring around the yellow line? What infiltrations is Israel trying to prevent? Why does Israel argue that these military positions are necessary?

Both reports carefully document what Israel is doing, but provide remarkably little investigation into why Israel says it is doing it. That omission is especially glaring because the article itself acknowledges that Israel says its airstrikes target Hamas fighters and that the Israeli government has said it will not fully withdraw until Hamas disarms.

Near the end, CBC News even concedes that Israel may be taking a harder territorial position to pressure Hamas to surrender its weapons. Yet Hamas’ activities on the ground are barely examined.

The CBC News reports track Israeli positions, fortifications and demolished buildings in detail while offering audiences almost no comparable understanding of the armed group Israel says it is confronting.

Readers and viewers are given a picture in which Israeli military activity is visible everywhere while its adversary largely disappears from view. To its credit, Petricic and Angelovski state that the Israeli government denies trying to expel Palestinians or annex Gaza, and acknowledges that some Israeli rhetoric may be electoral or aimed at pressuring Hamas, but those caveats are overwhelmed by the report’s framing and use of reporter-added emotional language.

CBC News is entitled to report on what it considers newsworthy. But by fixing its gaze almost exclusively at alleged Israeli misdeeds, it is failing to meet even its own journalistic standards.

Photo credit: Saša Petricic