Canadian news media executives must face justice for their complicity in Gaza’s genocide

At Nuremberg Nazi media figures were convicted for inciting genocide against Jews by dehumanizing them. Canadian news executives must also be tried for narratives that dehumanized Palestinians. 

 

By Fareed Khan 

The unrelenting carnage in Gaza, where over 63,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023, demands accountability not only for those wielding weapons and issuing orders to commit genocide but also for those crafting public narratives that enable such atrocities. Executives at Canadian mainstream media outlets, including CBC, CTV, Global News, and major newspapers like the National Post and the Globe and Mail, bear a profound responsibility for perpetuating a pro-Israel bias that largely obscures Palestinian suffering, sanitizes Israel’s genocidal acts, and suppresses evidence of ongoing atrocities.

A stark example of this media bias is the near-total silence in Canadian and Western news media on a recent Harvard Dataverse report by Israeli academic Yaakov Garb estimating that 377,000 Palestinians are missing—presumed dead, unaccounted for, or buried beneath the rubble of demolished buildings. As well, the media has ignored a survey commissioned in March by Pennsylvania State University and conducted by Israeli scholar Tamir Sorek that was published in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. It revealed that 82% of Jewish Israelis wanted to ethnically cleanse Gaza, 56% supported ethnically cleansing Israel of Palestinians, and 47% favoured exterminating all Palestinians in Gaza. None of this has been reported in Canadian mainstream media.

 

  

 

Even before October 2023, CBC news executives killed reporter story pitches to cover the 2021 Human Rights Watch report designating Israel an apartheid state, the Sheikh Jarrah evictions in Jerusalem the same year, Israel assassinating Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022, and the Israeli bombing of the Jenin refugee camp in July 2023.

 

These are merely a handful of examples of editorial directives and slanted reporting practices resulting from the decades-long anti-Palestinian framing by these media outlets that aligns disturbingly with Israeli interests and propaganda, that has facilitated the Palestinian genocide. Just as Nazi news media figures were prosecuted at Nuremberg for their complicity in the Holocaust, these Canadian media executives must face trial—whether in Canada or at The Hague—for their part in pushing media narratives that support Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza.

 

Under the 1948 Genocide Convention, genocide encompasses acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Complicity in genocide, including aiding and abetting through propaganda, is equally punishable. Canadian media’s news coverage of Israel’s atrocities in Gaza reveals a pattern of distortion that meets this threshold. Investigative journalism by independent media sites The Maple and The Breach has exposed how executives and editors at CBC, CTV, and Global News, as well as at the Post Media chain and the Globe and Mail, have enforced a narrative that favours Israel while marginalizing or negating Palestinian voices, effectively endorsing the conditions for genocide.

 

  

 

One of the most insidious practices is the deliberate manipulation of language. Reporters at broadcast and print media outlets have been explicitly instructed to avoid terms like “genocide,” “Palestine,” “horrific,” “brutal,” or “slaughter” when describing Palestinian deaths or Gaza’s destruction by Israel. Instead, Palestinians are described with passive terms like “died” or “dying”, euphemisms that strip agency from Israel’s criminal actions. In contrast, Israeli victims of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack have been described as being “killed,” “murdered,” or “slaughtered,” amplifying their suffering with emotive terminology. This linguistic double standard dehumanizes Palestinians, presenting their deaths as passive and taking place in a vacuum rather than the result of deliberate actions by the Israeli military. Such framing echoes Nazi-era media, which minimized Jewish suffering, or worse, supported Nazi policies, to normalize the Holocaust, a precedent that led to convictions at Nuremberg for propagandists like Julius Streicher.

 

Quantitative analysis further damns Canadian mainstream media. An investigative study by The Breach revealed that CBC’s flagship program, The National, featured 42% more Israeli voices than Palestinian ones in the first month of the Gaza conflict, despite Palestinians suffering seven times more deaths. Similarly, CTV’s National News, Canada’s most-watched news broadcast, consistently prioritized Israeli perspectives, with pro-Israel voices, particularly Israeli government voices, receiving far more airtime and attributions in stories than Palestinian ones, and rarely being challenged by reporters when their statements were questionable. Meanwhile, Global News suppressed critical reporting of Israel, with sources claiming an anchor’s stories exposing Israeli actions were refused airtime. This imbalance is not journalistic oversight but a systemic editorial choice to amplify the government of Israel’s narrative while silencing Palestinian voices as Israel was committing mass murder in Gaza.

 

  

Reporters’ failure to challenge Israeli claims during interviews for mainstream news outlets compounds this bias. Statements by Israeli officials—often riddled with inaccuracies and at times outright lies, such as denying starvation in Gaza or blaming Hamas for Palestinian civilian deaths—were aired without scrutiny or verification. In contrast, Palestinian accounts are often met with skepticism or outright dismissal. For instance, CBC reporters interrupted interviewees over 100 times when they raised allegations of genocide, a tactic rarely applied to Israeli guests. This selective journalistic rigour mirrors the “Palestine exception” in Canadian media, where Israel’s actions are insulated from the critical lens applied to other conflicts. By refusing to question Israeli propaganda, media executives enable a narrative that justifies mass violence, much as news media in Nazi Germany disseminated lies to enable the apathy of the German public towards state persecution of the Jewish population.

 

This bias is not new but rooted in decades of anti-Palestinian racism in Canadian reporting. Coverage of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories since 1967 has consistently framed Palestinians as aggressors and “terrorists” and Israel as a victim defending itself. The 1948 Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled and tens of thousands murdered, is rarely mentioned, erasing the historical context of dispossession. Instead, stories emphasize Israel’s “security needs,” ignoring the Apartheid system documented by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and the UN. This framing desensitizes audiences to Palestinian suffering, paving the way for acceptance of Gaza’s current catastrophe. As The Maple notes, Canadian media’s refusal to cover polls revealing Jewish Israeli support for extreme policies in Gaza further shields audiences from Israel’s genocidal intent.

 

The legal case for prosecuting Canadian media executives is robust. The Genocide Convention’s Article III(c) criminalizes “direct and public incitement to commit genocide,” while Article III(e) targets complicity. By systematically distorting the reality of Palestinians in Gaza in favour of Israel—downplaying their pain and suffering, amplifying Israeli narratives, and suppressing news about the crimes committed by Israel against Palestinians—news executives aid Israel’s ability to act with impunity and sell the dehumanization of Palestinians to the Canadian public. The International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) 2024 provisional measures against Israel, citing plausible genocide, underscore the gravity of such complicity. In addition, Canadian law, incorporating the Convention through the Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act, allows for domestic prosecution of genocide-related offences. Alternatively, Canadians also have the option of filing complaints against Canadian news executives at the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague which has ultimate jurisdiction over cases relating to complicity in genocide, as seen in the arrest warrants it issued for Israeli leaders.

 

Historical precedent supports this. At Nuremberg, media figures like Streicher, publisher of Der Stürmer, were convicted for inciting genocide through propaganda that dehumanized Jews. Hans Fritzsche, a radio propagandist, was tried for shaping public opinion to enable Nazi atrocities. Canadian executives’ actions—directing biased coverage, enforcing anti-Palestinian language, and silencing dissent—parallel these cases. Their influence over public perception, especially in a country with significant diplomatic support for Israel, makes their complicity undeniable.

 

  

Critics may argue that media bias, however egregious, does not constitute legal complicity. Yet propaganda’s role in enabling genocide is well-established. The Rwandan genocide saw radio stations prosecuted for inciting violence through biased narratives. Canadian media’s vast reach—CBC alone commands a $1.68 billion public budget—amplifies its impact. By shaping public and political opinion to tolerate Israel’s actions, news media executives contribute to Canada’s failure to enforce a ceasefire, halt arms exports and uphold international law, further establishing their complicity in genocide.

 

The counterargument that journalists merely report facts ignores the editorial gate keeping exposed by The Breach and The Maple in their investigations. Reporters have faced censorship and even been fired, with CTV’s Bell Media banning the word “Palestine” and CBC disciplining staff for sharing critical journalism on social media. These are not neutral decisions but deliberate efforts to align with Israel’s anti-Palestinian racist narratives. The Maple’s investigation into Post Media’s rewriting of wire stories to favour Israel—replacing “militants” with “terrorists” or omitting “occupied” from Palestinian territories—reveals a broader industry pattern of clear anti-Palestinian racism similar to what Jews faced in Europe in the 1930s. This top-down control implicates executives, producers, and editors not just reporters, in a racist propaganda machine that has contributed to genocide.

 

The human toll in Gaza—potentially over 100,000 children buried under rubble, families starved, hospitals and supposed “safe zones” bombed—demands accountability beyond the battlefield perpetrators, and the Israeli political and military leaders that ordered the genocidal acts. Canadian media executives, by whitewashing Israel’s actions, have blood on their hands, and they are not alone given that this anti-Palestinian prejudice is widespread among Western media outlets. The trial of these media executives, whether in Canada or at The Hague, would send a message—propaganda disguised as news that enables genocide is a crime against humanity.

 

As Nuremberg showed, those who wield pens and microphones to dehumanize and distort are as culpable as those who wield weapons. Justice for Palestinians requires dismantling this infrastructure of complicity, starting in the boardrooms and executive offices of CBC, CTV, Global News, and at the major newspaper outlets that peddle biased news to the Canadian public that enables the most horrific crimes under international law. Failure to do so would contribute to the commission of the ultimate crime, and fracture the foundations of on which justice and our collective humanity have been built.

  

© 2025 The View From Here. © 2025 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Western news media has been complicit in the Gaza genocide and needs to be held accountable

The time is now to hold the media accountable for its role in this genocide . . . To excuse the media's actions is to accept the normalization of violence against the innocent.

By Fareed Khan 

 

Despite the recent ceasefire between Israel and Hamas the world continues to watch a catastrophe unfold in Gaza.  Since October 2023 over 58,000 Palestinians have been murdered by Israel in a live streamed genocide, with a third of them children, and more than 800 babies under the age of one.

 

One of the most disturbing aspects of this genocide is how Western news media has been complicit in Israeli crimes through their biased coverage of the Israeli war in Gaza, and perpetuating Israeli lies without thoroughly investigating the claims made by Israeli officials.  One example is the claim made by Israel in the days following October 7th attack that Hamas soldiers gang raped Jewish women and beheaded babies. Based on almost 15 months of Western news media coverage of Israel's war on the people of Gaza it has become painfully clear that many Western news outlets have played an insidious role in facilitating what has been described as a genocide against Palestinians in Gaza by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Court of Justice (ICJ). 

While the ICJ is focused on holding Israel's leadership accountable for its criminal actions in Gaza, it is imperative that we acknowledge the complicity of many Western journalists and media corporations that have distorted the truth about the Palestinian struggle for freedom from Israeli occupation and oppression. The manner in which the stories of Palestinians have been covered by news organizations like the New York Times, the BBC, and CNN have enabled anti-Palestinian racism, and have enabled a cycle of violence that has been going on for more than half a century.

From the moment Hamas launched its attack on Israel a dangerous narrative was unleashed that resulted in support for the genocide of Palestinians. Israeli leaders made unequivocal declarations, dehumanizing Gazans by referring to them as "human animals." This rhetoric laid the groundwork for the blanket criminalization of an entire population, as Israel’s response escalated into a systematic and inhumane assault that has left tens of thousands of Palestinians dead and entire neighbourhoods and cities reduced to rubble. Such gross injustice should have ignited a fierce moral outcry, but instead, we saw a media ecosystem that largely normalized the violence and failed miserably to hold Israel accountable.

Western media’s portrayal of Israeli crimes has been characterized by grave misrepresentation and opportunistic selectivity. Rather than providing a balanced view, they have often opted to amplify Israeli voices while marginalizing Palestinian stories and experiences. This bias is not merely a journalistic oversight, it is a form of complicity in the suffering and extermination of a people. By allowing Israeli narratives that depict Palestinians as less than human and mere collateral damage in a broader conflict, the media have facilitated a silencing or distortion of the fundamental truth -- that Palestinians are being murdered by a rogue terrorist state with the complicity of the West.

Moreover, in their coverage Western media have fostered an environment where Israeli atrocities can be understated and ignored. The Israeli airstrikes that destroyed Gaza hospitals and killed medical personnel, the stories of children murdered and maimed, and lives irrevocably altered, are often relegated to footnotes in a larger story line that focuses on the violence committed by Hamas while giving Israeli crimes a pass. In failing to challenge the official Israeli narrative of “self defence,” news media in the West have diluted the gravity of Israel’s crimes while prioritizing fabricated accounts of violence against Israelis. This is not only irresponsible, it is dangerous and constitutes a moral betrayal of the journalistic responsibility to report truthfully and ethically.

The pain and suffering of Palestinians, presented through the lens of Israeli brutality and oppression, and the longest occupation in modern history, has been systematically erased from the narrative. The lives lost in Gaza do not merely represent numbers, they are a testament to the Palestinian struggle for dignity, survival, and basic human rights. The Western media's failure to elevate Palestinian voices — a chorus that has bravely emerged despite unimaginable danger — cries out for justice. Journalists on the ground in Gaza, whose courage should be lauded, have been met with silence from their Western counterparts, as they risk everything to report on the devastation and despair unfolding before them.

The absence of journalistic solidarity also speaks volumes. While many Palestinian journalists have met tragic fates, being targeted for assassination by Israel, the silence from major Western newsrooms about their plight is both telling and shameful. We have witnessed a massacre of journalists, yet the acknowledgement of this tragedy has been woefully inadequate. The Western media's silence is effectively an endorsement of a status quo which benefits Israel, one that prioritizes certain lives over others in a blatant act of racialized bias.

As Western citizens and consumers of the news, we must demand accountability — not just from political leaders but from those who shape our understanding of international conflicts. The notion that biased news stories and deflections from the truth are acceptable in reporting must be challenged and eliminated. To persist in publishing and broadcasting unbalanced coverage not only marginalizes the voices of the oppressed but also undermines our humanity. Journalists and media outlets willfully ignoring the long history of suffering endured by Palestinians do so at their own moral peril.

The time is now to hold the media accountable for its role in this genocide. We must call out those who perpetuate lies and misinformation, who sanitize the brutal realities faced by Gazans, and who have embraced complicity over truth. To excuse the media's actions is to accept the normalization of violence against the innocent. 

Ultimately, what is at stake is not just the future of the Palestinian people but humanity's moral compass. If we allow this complicity to continue unhindered, we risk endorsing a form of violence that dehumanizes us all. The call for accountability must reverberate through our institutions, from the halls of power, to the editing rooms of news networks, to all journalists committed to telling truthful stories. We must insist on a truth that encompasses all lives — one that affirms the dignity of every person, regardless of their background or where they reside. The media holds the power to either nuance our understanding of global conflicts or contribute to their devastation. Let us advocate for the former, and in doing so, reject the complicity of genocide once and for all.

 

© 2025 The View From Here.  © 2025 Fareed Khan.  All Rights Reserved.

Deconstructing Colonialism in the Media: Islamophobia and Anti-Muslim Bias in Mainstream News Media

By Fareed Khan (Founder, Canadians United Against Hate)

 

The following is based on a presentation on racism in the media delivered at the “Dismantling Colonialism” conference on behalf of Canadians United Against Hate, organized by the Canadian Congress on Inclusive Diversity and Workplace Equity on January 20 & 21, 2022.

The era of political colonialism may have ended in the post-World War II period, as European colonies in Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa and Asia gained independence, but the repercussions of colonialism continue to be felt today.  In western nations, which have allowed large scale immigration from former colonial territories, the repercussions of colonialism continue to negatively impact racialized communities, and they continue to affect society at large in harmful ways.

 

Colonial ways of thinking, including the racism that accompanies them, are evident in all aspects of Canadian society, and one of those aspects is mainstream media. Racism in the media is a topic about which there has been considerable academic research, and given the many facets of the issue this discussion will only scratch its surface, and will focus primarily on how biased or racist media has impacted  Muslims.

 

Media has immense power to shape societies.  It has been the case historically, and it is even more so since the start of the broadcast media era, the era of cable news networks, and now during the digital media era.

 

It should be noted that colonial systems, whether in Canada or elsewhere, are inextricably linked to genocide, slavery and white supremacy.  Settler colonial societies like Canada are founded on these ugly realities, whether or not Canadians want to admit it, and it is because this nation is rooted in that history that racism is endemic.  It is also why the human rights of racialized people have been violated repeatedly since before Confederation and into the 21st century, not just by racist elements in society but also by governments.

 

Furthermore, this means that the public and private institutions that built Canada were in turn founded on policies rooted in Indigenous genocide, slavery and white supremacy, and the racism that accompanied them.  While society has evolved and continues to evolve, and there are efforts by social justice organizations and political actors to mitigate how we are all affected by this history, we cannot deny the fact that this is a reality on the ground, and that racism is part of the DNA of all major institutions in this country.

 

As much as politics and capitalism shaped this nation so has media, at times hand in glove with governments and politicians.  If asked, experts who study media would say without hesitation that racism has been and continues to be part of the media ecology, particularly within right wing media.  All you need to do is look at mainstream news and entertainment media to realize this.  Examples abound of instances where media has enabled hate and racism, with FOX News in the US and the tabloid press in the UK being prime examples.  In addition, with major media outlets led by senior executives who are primarily white men, this should not be surprising.  This is not to say that these men are deliberately racist, just that they work in systems defined by racism and white privilege, and are often unwilling to dismantle the racist foundations on which the systems in which they work are built.

 

If there is one facet of media that has shaped 20th Century society it is Hollywood-based entertainment media which has been involved in promoting racist stereotypes since its inception.  From racist portrayals of Black people, East Asians, and Indigenous Americans, you will find an abundance of Hollywood fare that conveys racist messaging and stereotypes.

 

One racialized minority group that has been the target of racist Hollywood productions for more than century are Arabs, and by extension Muslims.

 

 

In 2001 American academic Jack Shaeen released a ground-breaking book titled “Reel Bad Arabs” which dissected Hollywood’s slanderous history in its portrayal of Arabs and Muslims dating from cinema's earliest days to contemporary Hollywood blockbusters.  The book was turned into a documentary in 2006, which reviewed more than 1000 films featuring Arab and Muslim characters since the start of the Hollywood film industry.  Its message was that Hollywood has vilified Arabs and Muslims and portrayed them through a racist lens since the start of the film industry, thereby implanting racist stereotypes about these communities into the minds of the public.

This conclusion was reinforced in a 2018 report that detailed how Hollywood films and TV shows have demonized Muslims and the Islamic faith.  This report was only one among many reports and studies over the last two decades that have highlighted the existence of anti-Muslim bigotry and anti-Arab racism in Hollywood.

In recent decades all you have to do is look at some of the films and TV shows coming out of Hollywood, including blockbuster films, where Arabs and Muslims have been dehumanized and are only seen as terrorists, violent extremist thugs, or in the case of Muslim women, people that need to be saved from the uncivilized culture in which they live.

 

Films like Executive Decision, True Lies, The Siege, and Iron Man wove violent Muslim characters into the stories as villains, and didn't make any differentiation between their villains and the vast majority of Muslims who are peaceful.  Then there are long-running TV series like Homeland and 24 which made a point of making Muslims recurring villains over multiple seasons.  These are only a handful of the Hollywood products where Muslims and Arabs are consistently cast as the enemy bent on destroying democracy and the West.  Let us think about what this does to a public fed on this imagery year after year, how they respond when they encounter Muslims in their lives, and let us consider the impact that repeated negative stereotypes of Muslims promoted in the guise of entertainment has on society at large. 

 

However, despite the history of Hollywood vilifying Muslims and their faith, it is news media that by far has done the greatest damage in feeding the beast of Islamophobia.

 

Since long before the 9/11 terrorist attacks western news media portrayed the Muslim world and by extension Muslims in a negative light.  We first started seeing it during and after the Arab-Israeli war in 1967.  It escalated during the OPEC oil shock of the early and mid 1970s, continued during the Iranian revolution and hostage crisis, and we continued seeing Islamophobic news headlines and stories throughout the 1980s, in the lead up to and following the Gulf War, and throughout the 1990s.

 

With the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington DC the floodgates of anti-Muslim media portrayals opened wide.  While there was research available at the time that received media coverage highlighting the role that news media played in fanning anti-Muslim hate, it was generally ignored by producers, editors and news executives because there were ratings and profits in telling stories laced with anti-Muslim prejudice.

 

 

This story in Pundit magazine was published in the days following the 9/11 attacks.  It talked about the hypocrisy of mainstream media outlets which condemned anti-Muslim hate crimes that surged in the wake of 9/11, while at the same time their Islamophobic media coverage of the attack spread fear through western Muslim communities and in effect terrorized them.  The terminology used in media stories took the actions of a handful of extremists who were Muslim and blamed all 1.6 billion followers of the Islamic faith for the crimes they committed.  Pejorative terms like “Islamic terrorism”, “Muslim terrorist”, and “Jihadist” were interchangeably used in headlines and news stories, and in the process stigmatized Muslims living in the west.  This prejudicial and racist media coverage continued in stories about the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, the War on Terror, and any story related to violent attacks involving Muslims.  Such xenophobic coverage fed the anti-Muslim hate that has become in many ways normalized in Canada and other western countries.

 

Furthermore, when you get discussions on major news shows with headlines like this from a CNN interview with Iranian-American academic Reza Aslan, along with anti-Muslim rants in the echo chamber of right-wing talk radio, it is no wonder that a majority of the public has negative attitudes towards Muslims, and why Muslims feel threatened in their communities.

 

These negative media portrayals are likely part of the reason why nearly half of Canadians said they had unfavourable views of Islam and Muslims in an Angus Reid poll conducted in 2017 only months after the Quebec City mosque shooting.

 

The British tabloid press is also notorious for its Islamophobic headlines which convey messaging that says anything related to Muslims is something to be feared and hated.  Such headlines and stories are reminiscent of stories and editorial cartoons about Jews in German newspapers and magazines in the 1920s and 1930s. 

 

The dehumanization that occurs when the public repeatedly sees such headlines and stories about a minority community is one of the factors that contributes to public perceptions that the targeted community is an enemy.

 

 

Displayed are two magazine covers which are also negative and racist in their portrayal of Muslims.  On the left is one from Charlie Hebdo, a notoriously  Islamophobic French publication, where the cartoon implies that the prophet of Islam was a pedophile.  While on the right is a very controversial cover from The New Yorker magazine where Barack Obama is portrayed in traditional Muslim attire. The implication being that Obama was a secret Muslim and therefore was unfit to be president. While magazine editors claimed the cover was meant to be satirical the cover was condemned by the Obama campaign as “tasteless and offensive”.

 

 

Media bias is also evident in the way attacks by Al-Qaeda and ISIS inspired terrorists have been covered compared to the way that attacks against Muslims have been covered.  The Globe and Mail is no stranger to this type of bias, as is evident in their coverage of the  Boston Marathon bombing when compared to coverage of the  Quebec City mosque shooting.  The coverage of the Boston attack, an event on US soil where two people were killed, received a full banner headline on the front page.  While the attack at the Quebec City mosque where six Canadian Muslims were murdered received only a column of coverage on the front page.

Another example of the bias of Globe and Mail editors was evident following the terrorist attacks on two New Zealand mosques.

 

On March 15, 2019 a white supremacist gunman walked into two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand spraying the worshippers with gunfire. The day after the shooting the cover of the Globe and Mail showed a full-page illustration of Finance Minister Bill Morneau rather than focussing on the horrific attack where 51 Muslim worshippers were murdered and another 40 were seriously injured.

 

Another example of biased coverage is evident in these headlines of the Orlando nightclub shooting where the perpetrator of is referred to as a “maniac”, whereas coverage of the New Zealand mosque shooter refers to him as an “angelic boy".  The prejudice and racist and mindset of the editors is apparent in how they framed each story.

 

The reality is that Muslims have been under assault by a racist media  establishment for decades.  Another example of this is that Muslims who are merely accused of plotting violence (but don't act on it) receive 700% more negative media coverage than white supremacists and right wing extremists who actually commit acts of violence resulting in death.

 

The institutional media bias is clear, and it is fed at times at by political narratives pushed by conservative politicians who paint Muslims as enemies.  This is the case with the Quebec government and its Bill 21 secularism law which, while it affects all racialized religious minorities, was meant to specifically target Muslims.  In doing this Quebec is taking a page from France, a nation which has adopted some of the strongest anti-Muslim policies of any western democracy, rooted in fascism and the worst kind of racism.  Islamophobia in Canada was also fed by the policies of the Stephen Harper government and enabled by his right wing media allies in the Post Media chain while he was prime minister.

 

The bias and racism experienced by Muslims at the hands of the media has also been felt by other racialized communities. If we consider media coverage around the Black Lives Matter movement, the way that media has covered police shootings of Black people, or the way that media in Canada has covered disruptive protests by Indigenous people, they show the same negative and prejudiced approach to covering those stories as is the case in stories involving Muslims. 

 

An example of racist media coverage of stories involving Indigenous people is demonstrated by comparing the number of critical news stories in 2020 about Wet'suetan land defenders, who blockaded roads in BC, to the number of critical stories about violent mobs of white men who attacked Miqmaa fishers and their boats in Nova Scotia.  The sharp contrast in media coverage of peaceful protests by Indigenous people and violent attacks by a mob of white people could not be more clear.

 

In addition, here we have a cartoon that was published in a major newspaper in Missouri only days after George Floyd's murder by a white police officer.  It is clearly racist in its imagery and messaging.  The public reaction to this was intensely negative and it resulted in the editor and the publisher of the newspaper resigning, and the interim editor publishing an unreserved apology and retraction.  One thing this incident demonstrated was that an activist public, responding to racist news material, and making their voice heard, can make a difference to help change happen.

 

So what is the solution?  What can ordinary citizens do to change negative media narratives on issues related to racialized communities?  The first thing is to diversify news rooms and make sure that the people we see telling the stories reflect the diversity of Canada.  The second is to diversify the senior management of Canadian news media organizations so that those who make the decisions about the stories told -- the editors and executive producers -- are people who have lived experiences in diverse communities, and can push past the ingrained white privilege and white blindness that exists at the senior levels of far too many news organizations.  The third is to call out racist or xenophobic news stories or material, as in the case of the cartoon, where and when they happen.  Letting such stories and editorials stand without objection ends up inflaming racist attitudes and endangers racialized communities.  And a final recommendation is for news producers and editors to broadcast and publish more positive stories featuring racialized and marginalized communities so that the public is not fed a constant barrage of negative information and imagery of these communities.

 

The major structural changes at the executive level of news media companies are not going to occur overnight.  It will require sustained activism, societal, and political pressure for such change to happen.  The colonial mindset of corporate and institutional leaders rooted in white privilege has existed for more than a century, and despite best efforts over the last few decades change has been far too slow.  Despite the challenges efforts to decolonize media institutions needs to continue if newsrooms and their news products are to reflect Canada's diversity.

 

Being non-racist and passive in our approach to racism in society is not enough to undo the legacies of racism, white supremacy, slavery and Indigenous genocide that are part of the societal and cultural DNA of this country.  For meaningful change to take place, to undo all the damage done by these legacies, we must commit ourselves to being actively and uncompromisingly anti-racist in our words and our deeds.  This is the only path before us if we want to have the accepting, diverse and inclusive society that the vast majority of Canadians desire.

 

  

© 2022 The View From Here.  © 2022 Fareed Khan.  All rights reserved.