When there is problematic anti-Israel bias or disinformation in the Canadian media, HonestReporting Canada will not hesitate to demand better.

But it is no less important to recognize excellence, particularly from outlets which have produced problematic content in the past.

Ottawa Morning is a CBC radio program hosted by Rebecca Zandbergen, which HonestReporting Canada has critiqued in the past. However, in an October 30 segment, “Mother of Canadian victim of Oct 7. Hamas attacks on Israel shares daughter’s story,” Zandbergen spoke with sensitivity to the mother of Adi Vital-Kaploun, an Israeli murdered on October 7, 2023.

Click below to listen to the segment:

Vital-Kaploun was the granddaughter of Irving Rivers, a well-known small business owner in Ottawa’s Byward Market who passed away in 1997, but whose namesake store remains a staple of the city.

In the interview, Jacqui Rivers Vital, who was in Ottawa to speak at a fundraiser for Friends of the Jewish National Fund, told Zandbergen about her daughter, saying that she “fought like a lion to save her cubs,” describing her heroic actions to save the lives of her two boys, aged three years old, and the other just six months of age.

During the assault by Hamas terrorists, Vital-Kaploun was inside the safe room with them, but was eventually overpowered and murdered by them. Her sons were later kidnapped.

The conversation featured Rivers Vital speaking in detail about the events that morning, including how Hamas terrorists were “grabbing people, burning people, kidnapping people.”

As Rivers Vital recounted her experiences two years earlier, Zandbergen responded with empathy, saying “this must have been your worst nightmare,” and asking questions like “what then has the last two years been like?” and “just describe what it’s been like to have your life continue on without her and the work you’ve been doing?”

The importance of such programming for Canadians is critical. Firstly, it helps to remind the Canadian public that the war in Gaza did not take place in a vacuum. It happened as a direct result of the mass murders, rapes, kidnappings and torture that occurred by Palestinian terrorists on October 7, 2023, at the hands of Islamic extremists who not only murdered civilians, but acted in indescribable savagery.

Secondly, it humanizes Israelis as real people who have suffered and died as a result of war that was imposed on them, helping the Canadian public to recognize that suffering is not an exclusive domain of one side in war.

Rivers Vital has been interviewed in the Canadian media recently, where on behalf of a group called the Association of Families of the Canadian Victims of October 7th, she has stated that Prime Minister Carney has failed to meet with representatives of families who lost loved ones at the hands of Palestinian terrorists. Iris Weinstein Haggai, whose parents were murdered in the massacres, was quoted by CityNews in an October 30 article as saying “he ignored every message and every letter that we sent him.”

While HonestReporting Canada has critiqued Zandbergen for some of her past coverage, this her interview with the mother of Adi Vital-Kaploun was commendable and deserving of praise.