For the second time in just over three weeks, a small Vancouver Island newspaper has used an anti-Israel group’s press release and has effectively uncritically repurposed it into news articles.
In early March, the Comox Valley Record, part of the Black Press Media chain, published an article reporting on an upcoming tour by a pair of anti-Israel speakers, essentially regurgitating a news release from a local anti-Israel group and recategorizing it as news, and offering nothing in the way of balance or even basic background information.
On March 26, the newspaper did it again. The article entitled: “Comox Valley event planned for week of action against Israeli wine,” while categorized under ‘local news,’ was a combination of effectively copying a press release from the group ‘Ban Israeli Wine BC,’ and extensively quoting one of their organizers.
The article quoted the group’s press release as saying: “while the Israeli military has resumed indiscriminate bombardment of Gaza and intensified brutality and repression in the West Bank after 16 months of active genocide, our elected officials have an urgent duty to act,” while offering no balance nor context so readers could understand that claims of “indiscriminate bombardment” and “genocide” are allegations, not statements of fact.
The claims of “indiscriminate bombardment” and “genocide” may be personal opinions, but they are being dangerously used to demonize Israel and its supporters, helping to portray them as supporters of an evil regime, though there is simply no evidence to support these accusations. The “genocide” slander has been used by anti-Israel activists to accost Jewish Canadians and their supporters, and by giving this allegation an uncritical platform, the Comox Valley Record has given it undeserved credibility.
One representative of the group was quoted, Tamer Aburamadan, who repeated the unfounded slander of “Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” Aburamadan is a chameleonic local anti-Israel activist who, depending on that day’s protest is promoted, is identified as a local Palestinian activist, or being involved with groups ranging from Independent Jewish Voices, Al-Awda, Concerned Patrons of VPL, VanQuad4Pal, and now, the group ‘Ban Israeli Wine BC.’
As for the protest that the Comox Valley Record decided to promote, including in its follow up coverage on April 1 entitled: “Comox Valley residents call on province to ban Israeli wine,” the rally only attracted around a dozen people, including participants’ children, demonstrating once again that the anti-Israel activist scene, despite its demonstrated skill in attracting sympathetic and uncritical news coverage, remains a remarkably marginal element of Canadian society.
The Comox Valley Record’s article’s gave readers a detailed preview of what the anti-Israel group advocated, including protesting and calling provincial politicians, but what was noticeably absent was any semblance of balance. Nobody with any opposing views was quoted, paraphrased or even mentioned.
That would be perfectly acceptable if this were a press release, but these were articles, or at least categorized as such, meaning that by once again taking the ramblings of a local fringe anti-Israel group, packaging it into supposedly legitimate news articles, and acting as their free publicist yet again, the Comox Valley Record was allowing itself to be a platform for the dissemination of hateful anti-Israel propaganda from a radical and marginal minority.
