Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif
As Israel accelerates its genocide, including by increasing the use of targeted executions against journalists, instead of standing up for the human rights of their colleagues, some members of the Canadian media are simultaneously accelerating the spread of misinformation through their social channels. Of note are a small group of political commentators at Canada’s largest syndicated outlet, Post Media.
While the use of misinformation online has been constant throughout the genocide, it’s particularly shocking to see members of the media taking part in it. I would humbly suggest that our media class should be held to a higher standard than 12-year-old boys for what they say and share online, as members of public rely on them and their outlets for critical information, and there is an expectation that this information will be truthful and balanced.
Palestinians – who have endured nearly two years of genocide and who are living in tents or the rubble of bombed out buildings – are now facing down more than the bullets and bombs that have killed over 60,000, but now also an engineered famine. News and social feeds are flooded with the images of emaciated Palestinians. In the past 24 hours alone, seven Palestinians including two children have died of malnutrition. Sky News reported this weekend on the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), which says that almost 13,000 new hospital admissions of children for acute malnutrition were recorded in July. In total more than 250 deaths have been recorded in Gaza due to malnutrition.
Israel of course denies that Palestinians are starving and has activated their global community of public relations supporters to refute this reality. Members of fringe and far-right outlets began insinuating that the graphic pictures we were seeing from Gaza were “staged.”
There is of course no evidence of this and I was truly shocked to see members of Canadian media outlets sharing and supporting inflammatory posts on X suggesting that the cover of the August issue of Time magazine – depicting a group of Palestinians at a community kitchen – was staged, and other members of the media suggesting that it was “Pallywood” – a racist portmanteau of Palestine and Hollywood used to falsely accuse Palestinians of faking scenes of suffering.
An alternative angle of the Time magazine cover photo.
As someone who has elected to bear witness to the genocide as fully as I can, the scenes coming out of Gaza are incredibly graphic and disturbing and there is no shortage of images of great suffering. If you’re paying attention and following Palestinian voices you will see it – despite the additional challenges of foreign journalists being barred from Gaza and the continued targeting and murdering of Palestinian journalists by Israel.
Some members of the Canadian media – all belonging the Post Media conglomerate – began to parrot the obvious lies and propaganda from the Israeli government related to starvation in Gaza, making the insidious insinuation that there was none.
These members of the media continued to push misinformation online after Israel executed an entire crew of Al Jazeera journalists in a targeted strike on their press tent outside of a hospital. The National Post – a member of post media – even ran a wire story from Israel which claimed that the prominent journalist Anas Al-Sharif was a terrorist. (While still incredibly inflammatory, the National Post was forced to amend the headline of the article and delete their post on X which referenced it).
They posted that Anas Al-Sharif – the high profile Al Jazeera journalist – is a member of Hamas, attached sizzle reels created by pro-Israel propaganda accounts, and yet shared no actual evidence of what they were purporting to be fact.
Of course, there is no credible evidence of Al-Sharif being a terrorist, though this is the line that Israeli government has created to justify his murder.
This lack of credible evidence to support Israel’s claim is why all mainstream news outlets identified Al-Sharif only as a journalist, as there is no evidence to suggest otherwise. There is evidence however, that the Israeli government has specialist unit within the IDF whose role is to identify journalists who they can “smear” as undercover terrorists.
That another prominent journalist was executed by Israel was deflating enough for me, but that members of the Canadian media actually defended it, and widely shared misinformation and propaganda to support it was truly shocking. Of any group, you would think journalists would defend their own. Not so.
So, this all begs the question for me – what type of accountability should members of the media be held to in public forums? When something is published by a news outlet, it’s supposed to be factual and impartial. But what about when a member of the media who has the trust of the public shares misinformation or propaganda through their own social channels?
To me that feels like an abuse of their role, but perhaps I’m asking to much – especially from the 12-year-old children these members of the media actually are.
So, while this is all a bit frustrating and depressing, we aren’t powerless, and if you want to take action, there are a few small things you can do:
1. Follow Palestinian voices in the media and on X so that you can get an on the ground perspective of what is happening. A few notable voices I can suggest are: the post-humous accounts of Anas Al-Sharif and Hossam Shabat, and the accounts of Wissam Shabat, Mosab Abu Toha, and Motasem A Dalloul. I also highly recommend the U.S.-based Drop Site News and reporters Jeremy Scahill and Ryan Grim.
2. Be active and when you see misinformation being pushed through an outlet, write to the standards editor, editorial masthead, of flag it organizations like Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East who are very well equipped to stickhandle it.
3. Log posts that explicitly endorse or encourage genocide in the Accountability Archive.