The extreme pro-Palestinian agenda promoted by much of the Canadian news media did not arise in a vacuum, but has been molded and enabled by a hardline, ideological environment inside journalism schools, particularly at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU).

From the presence of anti-Israel activist lecturers like Shireen Ahmed to hosting an unapologetic glorifier of Palestinian terrorism, Yipeng Ge, TMU’s journalism school continues to play host to a radical ideology in our view.

In a recent interview in the taxpayer-funded and disinformation-laden magazine The Walrus, Sonya Fatah, who is an associate professor and associate chair at TMU’s School of Journalism, spread nonsensical anti-Israel tropes alongside the outlet’s senior editor, Samia Madwar in a May 1 interview, “If Killing Journalists Is a War Crime, Why Isn’t Anyone Stopping It?”

Madwar introduced the subject of so-called “journalists” killed in Gaza by matter-of-factly telling readers about “Israel’s genocidal retaliation against Palestinians in Gaza,” falsely and disingenuously presenting her own opinion as if it was fact, when it most definitively is nothing of the sort.

Laying the groundwork with her fact-optional introduction, Madwar then repeated claims from the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) alleging that 129 “journalists” were killed during the Hamas-Israel war in Gaza, though she did not share that Israel and independent scholars say most of those include individuals who could hardly be called innocent civilians.

Fatah, for her part, leaned heavily into the baseless trope alleging that for the Palestinians, “there’s always been an erasure of their narrative, an erasure of their voices, in the news media.”

Fatah cited no evidence for her wild claim of the “erasure” of Palestinians, unsurprising because it would be difficult to provide proof where there is none. Rather than being erased, the Palestinian political narrative is being force-fed throughout academia, the news media, public schools and more.

Even daring to speak out against Palestinian political agendas is being termed “racism” by proponents, in a clear and brazen attempt to stifle any opposition to pro-Palestinian propaganda.

In one question to Fatah, Madwar briefly noted that Israel says “some journalists are militants,” a profound understatement.

Rather than address the evidence Israel has amassed, Fatah dismissed it, calling it “a classic disinformation campaign,” and launching into a rant about “colonialism and colonial movements,” a nonsensical non-sequitur.

At no point did Fatah admit that terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah are driven by their fanatical Islamist ideologies, and instead attempted to frame them as “movements” that simply arose because of their opposition to Israeli policy.

The conversation between Samia Madwar, the senior editor at The Walrus, and Sonya Fatah of Toronto Metropolitan University is a microcosm of the state of much of journalism in Canada today. A radical anti-Israel agenda at the cross-section of a publicly-funded media outlet and university, promoting hardline narratives and selectively omitting any information which comes into conflict with that narrow worldview.

Photo credit: Sonya Fatah