Paddy Daly is host of Open Line Daily, a call-in show broadcast on VOCM (“Local News Now”), a network of radio stations broadcasting out of St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador.
On a recent six-and-a-half-minute segment, a caller’s wild claims about Israel and Gaza quickly veered into biased and inflammatory territory. Daly not only allowed, but also echoed and amplified the caller’s outlandish claims: a Jewish plan for ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, cynical use of antisemitism as propaganda, and war crimes accusations.
Click below to listen to the full segment:
After a few niceties, the caller, identified as “Wayne,” launched into a screed of antisemitic conspiracy theories.
He first accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of avoiding a peace agreement, saying it “would be counter to the Jewish plan of ethnic cleansing of Palestine.”
At that point, Daly piped up to add, “don’t take it from Wayne… don’t take it from me, take it straight from Netanyahu himself.” He claimed that Netanyahu’s “primary strategy” during Israel’s last election was war with Hamas: “we’re not making stuff up here.”
Neither Daly nor the caller offered any evidence for these claims.
The caller went on to say that “the only justification [for Israel’s bombing Gaza]… is the big plan of clearing the Palestinian people from their own country and turning it over to the Jews.”
Both times, Wayne used the term “Jews,” rather than hiding behind the more neutral-sounding “Zionists.” This laid bare the antisemitism behind his claims. His assertion that Jews are intentionally committing ethnic cleansing to snatch Palestinian land, and acting as a “threat to the region,” eerily echo millennia-old anti-Jewish tropes about schemes for global domination.
At no point did Daly offer any challenge or correction, lending credibility to these antisemitic lies.
Instead, Daly started a discussion about whether it’s antisemitic to challenge Israel: “You say something bad about the IDF, all of a sudden you’re an antisemite.” Tellingly, he added: “Can we not have reasonable conversations about these very complicated issues?”
Israel’s security needs aren’t actually very complicated at all. Tel Aviv is less than an hour’s drive from Gaza. After nearly 20 years of missiles from Gaza, culminating in the brutal Hamas invasion of October 7, 2023, Israel’s leaders realized they couldn’t allow the situation to fester any longer.
Hamas had declared war; Israel responded by vowing to root out Hamas so its citizens could finally live in peace. No responsible government could have done otherwise.
What is complicated is the cognitive dissonance experienced by people like Daly and his caller, who twist all moral logic to turn Israel into the villain and the aggressor following Hamas’s invasion.
And Wayne certainly agreed wholeheartedly that it’s not antisemitic to oppose Israel: “The antisemitic line is nothing more than a propaganda piece that the Israelis throw out… It’s just a propaganda line from their propaganda Bible.”
This despite Hamas’s vowed intentions—and those of its puppet master, Iran—to eliminate not only the State of Israel, but Jews worldwide… and then to come after Western civilization as a whole.
When Daly aired the claim that accusations of antisemitism are inherently manipulative, it overlooked deadly incidents like the murder of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. and the fifteen people injured by a man throwing Molotov cocktails and shouting “Free Palestine!” at a Jewish community hostage demonstration in Boulder, Colorado.
Of course, it’s certainly possible to oppose policies of the State of Israel without being antisemitic, but this segment went far over the line.
While journalists are free to hold personal views, Daly violated journalistic ethics by blurring the line between opinion and journalism. In our view, he platformed outright antisemitism, validated conspiracy theories, and gave airtime for the normalization of deadly tropes against Jews.
This segment was a case study in irresponsible broadcasting. And Daly’s show isn’t some isolated podcast or fringe outlet. It airs on VOCM, part of the Stingray Group, which operates over 100 radio stations all over Canada. With revenues of $386.9 million a year, Stingray owns a number of Canada’s top radio stations.
Following a formal complaint filed by HonestReporting Canada with the Stingray Group, the company acknowledged that “the caller’s remarks included antisemitic tropes that are unacceptable and should have been more directly challenged,” and said they “sincerely apologize for the offense and concern this has caused.”
They further added that they would be undertaking an internal review and building strategies to ensure that such incidents do not take place in future. We appreciate this apology and pledge for remedial action by the Stingray Group and we look forward to working cooperatively to ensure that hate is not given a platform on any of its programs.
