If journalism is about telling the truth, rather than pushing a particular agenda, then a growing list of CBC programs appears to be unaware of this precept.

In two recent radio broadcasts and an accompanying news article, CBC interviewed self-identifying Palestinians in Canada for their take on the recent escalation in fighting between the Palestinian terrorist regime Hamas and Israel.

However, in all three reports, Hamas propaganda was falsely stated as truth, the Hamas regime was all but entirely ignored, and Israel was blamed for ending the ceasefire with Hamas.

In a March 21 segment entitled: “How Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza have devastated the family of one Ottawa resident,” host Alan Neal – whose program has frequently featured anti-Israel speakers, at the near-total exclusion of any other voices – spoke with Ottawa resident Sara El Arbid, who was there to speak about distant relatives of hers, with whom she had never met, killed in the war.

Listen to the full segment below:

While human interest stories are fair game, there is no excuse to leave facts at the door, as Neal did. In his introduction, Neal stated that 400 people were killed by Israel’s strikes, disingenuously failing to report that this was not a factual statement, but instead an unverified allegation from Hamas, a terrorist group that has widely falsified casualty data.

While another segment three days earlier, featuring Canada’s former ambassador to Israel Jon Allen, was, while imperfect, a fair interview, listeners would be hard-pressed to find a segment of Neal’s where Israelis were given a voice.

Also on March 21, The Morning Edition – K-W, a CBC radio program based in Kitchener-Waterloo, replayed an interview between Cambridge resident Rami Aljadba and CBC reporter Aastha Shetty.

In the segment entitled: “Local Palestinian community reacts to recent airstrikes in Gaza,” host Craig Norris, in introducing the interview, joined his colleague Alan Neal in repeating Hamas disinformation, stating without evidence that “600 people have been killed since Tuesday… after Israel ended a ceasefire agreement with a surprise bombardment on Gaza.”

Listen to the full segment below:

Not only did he fail to tell listeners who the source of these claims were, but that it is categorically false to say that Israel “ended a ceasefire” with Hamas. In fact, the ceasefire had ended, pending an extension of it, which Hamas had adamantly refused to negotiate good faith towards.

In the interview with Shetty, Aljadba expressed shock that Israel would conduct counter-terrorism operations “especially in the holy month of Ramadan… I can’t even find words to describe how sickening that was for me.”

Though Aljadba may have had no interest in mentioning that Hamas invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, it was the holy Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah, Shetty should have acknowledged this at some point, or at least about Hamas’ decision to start the war and continue to hold dozens of Israeli hostages. If Shetty’s name is familiar, it’s because we critiqued this CBC reporter in June of 2024 for giving a fringe group of anti-Israel protesters free publicity.

But for CBC, if their reporting on the topic was any indicator, Palestinian lives are worth discussing, while Israeli lives are of virtually no interest at all.

In her accompanying news article entitled: “Palestinian family in Cambridge worried about safety of family in Gaza,” published on March 22, Shetty interviewed Aljadba about the war in Gaza. While she did briefly mention the Israeli hostages still kept in Gaza, it hardly compares to the extended coverage provided to Gazans.

CBC’s laser focus on Palestinian suffering, at the near-exclusion of all others, is not just limited to the Middle East. In just a week in late January, an estimated three thousand people were killed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in fighting between the Congolese military and rebels.

But no locals in Kitchener-Waterloo were the subject of any CBC News story. Neal, for his part, covered the topic – once, in contrast to two such reports about Gaza, in a single week alone.

This is what it means when we say that the CBC continues to single out Israel for opprobrium and selective censure.