A few weeks ago, in an overheated and packed room at the Centre for Social Innovation in Toronto, several journalists took the mic to speak about their work in a powerful new book — When Genocide Wasn’t News — about how Canada’s legacy media has been responding to Israel’s intensive military campaign in Gaza.
The book features contributions from journalists — some writing under pseudonyms — who describe newsrooms gripped by fear and a misguided commitment to a notion of “objectivity” that fails to serve the public.
Today, in The Conversation Canada, an article by journalism professor Gabriela Perdoma of Mount Royal University, points out that while Palestinians in Gaza have endured over 640 days of relentless military assault by Israeli Defense Forces, including attacks on children, hospitals and aid workers, Canadian mainstream media has too often remained silent or misleading in its coverage. She says one of the issues is that “journalists who support peace efforts can easily be accused of being ‘biased’ in favour of those promoting peace.” And such accusations, she says, “can have an outsized impact on reporting and be used to silence journalists.”
Perdoma’s article challenges mainstream news narratives and calls for newsrooms to urgently reflect on how journalism in Canada must evolve, especially in times of war.