Canadian journalists are finally speaking out about how the Israel lobby group HonestReporting targets newsrooms to silence Palestinian voices and perspectives.
By Arfa Rana
August 8, 2025
MONDOWEISS
CBC headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo: Adam Moss/Wikimedia)
It’s no secret that Canadian newsrooms have long practiced the “Palestine exception” –– a pattern of bias and suppression of Palestinian voices and perspectives. While some Canadian journalists have sought to resist efforts to suppress the truth, Zionist lobbying groups such as HonestReporting and its Canadian chapter, HonestReporting Canada (HRC), have actively targeted newsrooms and journalists who highlight Palestinian perspectives.
Since its founding in 2003, HRC has positioned itself as a media watchdog to combat what it calls “anti-Israel bias” in Canadian newsrooms. But a closer look at the organization’s “Success” stories reveals something more troubling: a pattern of pressuring news outlets to reshape or retract coverage, often in ways that sanitize or suppress reporting on Palestinian suffering and settler-colonial violence.
How HonestReporting targets journalists
HRC maintains a system of “Media Alerts,” where they quickly respond to news stories they find objectionable, urging their audience to email or call editors and demand retractions, corrections, or apologies.
In the years leading up to October 2023, HRC maintained a steady stream of campaigns targeting Canadian media for language or framing that it found had pro-Palestine perspectives, which often resulted in headline tweaks, word changes, or added clarifications by editors.
In April 2023, CBC Radio aired a segment that referred to Gaza as “occupied”. Within 24 hours, following what HRC described as a “Success”, the CBC issued an on-air correction stating:
“Last night we made a reference to the Gaza Strip being ‘occupied’, the territory is not occupied, but rather has its borders controlled by Israel and Egypt.”
However, legal experts and international bodies quickly challenged the CBC’s amendment, arguing that control exercised by Israel since 2005 provides enough evidence that Israel remains the occupying power over Gaza.
After October 7, HRC significantly intensified its campaigns in both frequency and tone. Media coverage that centered Palestinian suffering or questioned Israel’s military response was swiftly condemned as “misinformation,” “bias,” or even “terror apologia.”
In 2023, HRC celebrated Palestinian journalist Zahraa Al-Akhrass’ termination with Global News, after she was accused by HRC of spreading “antisemitism” by using her social media to highlight Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Israeli government.
In another case, in May 2025 , HRC took credit for prompting Radio-Canada to issue a correction after an Oxfam official stated that Gaza’s population was being deliberately starved. Following HRC’s complaint, Radio-Canada added a clarification that the starvation of Palestinians is misinformation, despite evidence showing otherwise.
In some cases, HRC pressured newsrooms beyond factual corrections, urging removals of entire guest segments or op-eds that criticized Israeli policy. These campaigns often used pre-written complaint forms to mobilize mass email pressure on editors, contributing to what media scholars and advocacy groups have called a growing ‘chilling effect’ on Palestinian reporting.
CBC headquarters in Toronto, Ontario. (Photo: Adam Moss/Wikimedia)It’s no secret that Canadian newsrooms have long practiced the “Palestine exception” –– a pattern of bias and suppression of Palestinian voices and perspectives. While some Canadian journalists have sought to resist efforts to suppress the truth, Zionist lobbying groups such as HonestReporting and its Canadian chapter, HonestReporting Canada (HRC), have actively targeted newsrooms and journalists who highlight Palestinian perspectives.
Since its founding in 2003, HRC has positioned itself as a media watchdog to combat what it calls “anti-Israel bias” in Canadian newsrooms. But a closer look at the organization’s “Success” stories reveals something more troubling: a pattern of pressuring news outlets to reshape or retract coverage, often in ways that sanitize or suppress reporting on Palestinian suffering and settler-colonial violence.
How HonestReporting targets journalists
HRC maintains a system of “Media Alerts,” where they quickly respond to news stories they find objectionable, urging their audience to email or call editors and demand retractions, corrections, or apologies.
In the years leading up to October 2023, HRC maintained a steady stream of campaigns targeting Canadian media for language or framing that it found had pro-Palestine perspectives, which often resulted in headline tweaks, word changes, or added clarifications by editors.
In April 2023, CBC Radio aired a segment that referred to Gaza as “occupied”. Within 24 hours, following what HRC described as a “Success”, the CBC issued an on-air correction stating:
“Last night we made a reference to the Gaza Strip being ‘occupied’, the territory is not occupied, but rather has its borders controlled by Israel and Egypt.”
However, legal experts and international bodies quickly challenged the CBC’s amendment, arguing that control exercised by Israel since 2005 provides enough evidence that Israel remains the occupying power over Gaza.
After October 7, HRC significantly intensified its campaigns in both frequency and tone. Media coverage that centered Palestinian suffering or questioned Israel’s military response was swiftly condemned as “misinformation,” “bias,” or even “terror apologia.”
In 2023, HRC celebrated Palestinian journalist Zahraa Al-Akhrass’ termination with Global News, after she was accused by HRC of spreading “antisemitism” by using her social media to highlight Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Israeli government.
In another case, in May 2025 , HRC took credit for prompting Radio-Canada to issue a correction after an Oxfam official stated that Gaza’s population was being deliberately starved. Following HRC’s complaint, Radio-Canada added a clarification that the starvation of Palestinians is misinformation, despite evidence showing otherwise.
In some cases, HRC pressured newsrooms beyond factual corrections, urging removals of entire guest segments or op-eds that criticized Israeli policy. These campaigns often used pre-written complaint forms to mobilize mass email pressure on editors, contributing to what media scholars and advocacy groups have called a growing ‘chilling effect’ on Palestinian reporting.
‘I was being really hunted’
“There was a feeling that I was being really…hunted, and it was by HonestReporting Canada and outside agitators,” said Samira Mohyeddin, an award-winning journalist formerly with Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC.
Mohyeddin worked on the CBC radio show The Current for eight years and also contributed to Tapestry, Unforked, As It Happens, alongside other CBC documentary projects. She has been a frequent target by the HRC for the last four years.
When Mohyeddin criticized the Israeli government in social media posts or mentioned the settler-colonial history of Israel, such as on CBC’s Unforked podcast in 2021, HRC ran action alerts to encourage their members to file complaints against her with the CBC’s ombudsman.
In one case, Mohyeddin called out Eylon Levy, former Israeli spokesperson, for his “rabid lies,” such as his denial of Israel’s attacks on hospitals and the intentional starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
“I went on my social media and I called [Eylon Levy] a liar, and I was pulled into my managing editor’s office, and he said ‘You can’t call him a liar’,” Mohyeddin recalled. “I said, ‘But he’s lying’ and [the editor] said, ‘I know, but you can’t say that’.”
Many journalists shy away from criticizing the Israeli government and officials not only to curb harassment and to keep their jobs but also to avoid being labeled an anti-Semite, according to Mohyeddin.
In May 2024, an article in The Breach exposed how this fear has led to self-censorship and the softening of critical coverage regarding Israel’s actions in Gaza, highlighting instances where the CBC watered down or avoided reporting on the full extent of Israel’s military operations and their impact on Palestinian civilians.
“They would rather lie than be called antisemitic,” said Samira Mohyeddin. “At the upper echelons—managing editors, managers—there is a real fear. HonestReporting lives in the minds of managers and editors.”
Following October 7, there was an increase in resistance to criticism of Israel at the CBC, accompanied by the use of more sanitized language, according to Mohyidden.
“We never heard the term ‘Hamas-run health ministry’ before, and Hamas had been in power since 2006,” said Mohyeddin. “[The term] came from HonestReporting. HonestReporting congratulated itself in the middle of October when Canadian news media began to use that term.”
Mohyeddin, a queer reporter from Iran, obtained her undergraduate degree in religion and a master’s degree in gender and modern Middle Eastern history from the University of Toronto. She has studied media bias and particularly seen censorship evolve regarding Palestine over the past decades.
“I watch coverage from the 70s and 80s, and there is a real distinction between the way Israel was talked about, words like ‘apartheid’ and ‘occupation were used’, no problem,” said Mohyeddin. “People weren’t sensitive about calling Israel what it is, but today, you won’t find that. These are disputed terms.”
An open secret
Shift in language reflects a growing challenge for journalists, as reporting on Israel and Palestine becomes increasingly fraught with pressure to avoid terms that can lead to backlash from Zionist lobbying groups like HRC. The weight of this pressure is felt not only in editorial rooms but in the overwhelming demands placed on journalists.
“No one says it out loud, but everyone knows HRC has an impact on how managers run their newsrooms,” said Becky*, who was one of the few young journalists of color at CBC until her contract abruptly ended. She believes HRC was behind her termination.
Becky first appeared on HRC’s radar after writing an article quoting Human Rights Watch’s concerns about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. From that point onward, HRC monitored and urged its members to report her social media activity to CBC’s upper management.
“But I really was following all of CBC’s ridiculous rules,” said Becky. “I was only reposting the sources that [CBC] would consider legitimate like The Washington Post and the UN and the Red Cross.”
Despite this, Becky says she faced increasing internal scrutiny and believes that HRC’s persistent targeting influenced the decision to end her contract.
“[CBC upper management] had a lot of meetings with me about my social media activity, which is something that HonestReporting had flagged,” said Becky. “The fact that they laid me off, it came as a complete surprise to my direct supervisors, because my work was doing really well.”
A battle for accurate coverage
HonestReporting Canada’s campaigns often begin with public social media scrutiny but escalate into coordinated pressure tactics that flood newsrooms with complaints, which are tactics many journalists say distort newsroom priorities and punish dissent.
According to HRC’s own website, the lobby group exploits that disruption by directly negotiating with editorial leadership.
In their “How to Monitor The Media” guide, the group encourages its members to make a deal with newsrooms: “If they will agree to regular meetings, you will promise to restrain your rapid-response team and to restrict your complaints to only major errors. This takes tremendous pressure off the media, who abhor being flooded with email complaints and all the bad publicity. This also creates an ongoing dialogue, whereby local editors will eventually turn to HonestReporting activists as a resource on the Israeli perspective.”
“It’s a type of threat,” said Iman Kassam, a former CTV journalist who has been a target of HRC campaigns since 2021. “It’s a type of strong-arming newsrooms into complicity.”
“This is all public on the HRC website,” Kassam said. “They teach people how to do this. These lobby groups have so much money and quite a large membership.”
Kassam was targeted after they interviewed a pro-Palestinian activist supporting Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs against RCMP actions in B.C. in 2021. For about three weeks, their inbox was flooded with emails from personal accounts attacking their race, gender, and religion.
“Some were saying they knew where [I] lived,” Kassam recalled. When Kassam brought the issue to their union, they were refused help.
“The attacks were really personal and that’s what people don’t understand,” Kassam said. “The more marginalized you are, the more identifiable markers, the more personal that bullying becomes.”
Growing distrust in Canadian media
HRC has positioned itself not merely as a media watchdog, but as a force that shapes who is allowed to speak, and at what cost. In March, Hossam Shabat with Al Jazeera Mubasher was killed by an Israeli airstrike in his car in Beit Lahiya.
Rather than mourn his death, HRC launched a campaign labeling him a Hamas combatant and condemned outlets that called Shabat a journalist. Days later, they targeted Hind Khoudary, another Palestinian reporter, prompting online calls for her to be treated as a “legitimate target.”
The dangers of these narratives are not abstract. At least 240 journalists have been killed in Gaza since October 7, according to a Brown University report.
Meanwhile, in Canada, former CTV reporter Kassam is now researching how the Palestine-Israel coverage has shaped Gen Z’s trust in the news and discovered that the damage is already visible.
“I was able to see in real time how profoundly their trust is ruptured,” Kassam said. “The conflict left many of these young people feeling deceived, angered, [and] skeptical.”
To rebuild that fractured trust, Kassam believes the first step is confronting the structural forces shaping Canadian media.
“80 per cent of Canadian media is owned by five companies,” Kassam said. “What does that say about freedom of the press? It calls for a recalibration of journalistic objectivity.”
The silent fear gripping newsrooms is clear: if lobby groups like HRC can dictate who speaks and the language used, what justice can journalism truly serve?
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