In the almost 40 years since Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky published Manufacturing Consent, the media landscape has undergone some severe changes, mostly due to the internet and our reliance on it as a source of news. However, little has changed in how legacy media outlets help foster appetites for war and imperial policies abroad. Rather than hold power to account, we’ve seen the media parrot the talking points that echo in the corridors of power. False premises go unchallenged, narratives are repeated until they are seen as facts by the viewing public.
False premises go unchallenged, narratives are repeated until they are seen as facts by the viewing public.
Canadian media has, in its coverage of the genocide in Gaza, been guilty of negligence. For those of us who have followed the Israeli army’s genocidal campaign on social media, Al Jazeera, Democracy Now, Breaking Points, reports from the United Nations and NGOs like Oxfam and Amnesty International, Canadian media seems to be broadcasting from a parallel universe. Even Israeli coverage from outlets like Haaretz and +972 does a better job of exposing the brutality of Israel’s military machine.
A new collection of essays by an accomplished roster of journalists, edited by Martin Lukacs, Dania Majid and Jason Toney, When Genocide Wasn’t News: How Canadian media covered up the destruction of Gaza, takes apart the pro-war PR machine bolt by bolt. Journalists from across Canada’s media landscape share their stories, research and data, so that we can understand why our media presents such a skewed take on the genocide in Gaza. From omitting certain words to describing the deaths of Palestinian civilians in the passive voice, as though they were not intentionally killed by one of the world’s most sophisticated militaries, the authors make clear how the media is being used to spread the propaganda of an allied nation at the expense of human rights, international law and most importantly, the truth.
The first part of this book examines the anti-Palestinian bias in Canadian media with a rigorous methodology and clear-eyed examples of language use, using data to measure the hypocrisies and contradictions. The sheer number of times the word “massacre” was used to describe Israeli deaths versus when it was used to describe Palestinian deaths should be a wake-up call. Several metrics are introduced that measure the emphasis media has placed on Israeli deaths versus Palestinian deaths. The end result is clear, the media places a higher value on Israeli lives over Palestinian ones.
More than just the language used to depict one side as worthy victims, and the other unworthy, the erasure of Palestinian voices takes center stage in this book. Most of us carry around the belief that the press has a responsibility to show two sides of a conflict and provide context. So why is it we see so few Palestinians on air? Why is it that some outlets don’t even use words like “Palestine?” How come the conflict is not one regularly framed within the context of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land?
So why is it we see so few Palestinians on air? Why is it that some outlets don’t even use words like “Palestine?” How come the conflict is not one regularly framed within the context of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian land?
When Genocide Wasn’t News helps explore the anti-Palestinian bias in our media, looking at the mechanisms of censorship that have existed for years in Canada. One essay from a CBC reporter of Jewish heritage, writing under the pseudonym Molly Schumann, talks about how accusations of anti-Semitism were leveled against her for trying to inject more nuance into pieces about the Middle East. She was not the only journalist to face these bad faith accusations. Others talk about the unprecedented demands their bosses put upon them when they want to put a Palestinian on the air, demands not made of any other guests. The bottom line is always the same, different standards exist for stories about Palestine, and even as journalists bend over backwards to meet them, they are told by management that their stories can no longer see the light of day. It’s absurd that journalists must go to extreme lengths to tell stories about Palestinians while the Israeli government seems to have a direct line to certain media outlets. In those rare moments when pieces sympathetic to Palestinians are published, the journalist and the news outlet may find themselves on the receiving end of a smear campaign organized by lobby groups like Honest Reporting Canada (the very name conjures up a Soviet-style propaganda apparatus).
The bottom line is always the same, different standards exist for stories about Palestine, and even as journalists bend over backwards to meet them, they are told by management that their stories can no longer see the light of day.
Although quite a lot of the book is dedicated to exposing groups like Honest Reporting Canada, it does not lean into the “Jews control the media” conspiracy theory. A lack of resources and a lack of rigor, combined with a built-in Euro-centrism might be more to blame then even the lobby groups pushing against any non-Israeli narrative. An essay by Jeremy Appel shows how editorial standards crafted by conservative media tycoons led many Canadian papers to offer an imbalanced, anti-Arab view of the Middle East. That so much of the coverage of the genocide in Gaza feels like the US war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan is no coincidence, as the “clash of civilizations” narrative is baked into our media institutions.
Pacinthe Mattar’s essay, which went viral when a previous version was published in The Toronto Star, describes her experiences at the CBC, where her Egyptian heritage and fluency in Arabic had been considered an asset by her employers. However, her Middle Eastern perspective was not desired by her employer when it came to coverage of the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories. In 2017, she produced an interview with a Palestinian-American journalist covering protests in Jerusalem. That journalist outlined the harassment and intimidation that journalists face at the hands of the Israeli military. Predictably, the interview was pulled with no explanation. Mattar’s essay also calls attention to the unprecedented number of journalists that have been targeted and killed by the Israeli military.
When Genocide Wasn’t News makes it clear that the trend of anti-Palestinian bias predates the October 7th attacks by decades, citing examples of press coverage of several previous Israeli massacres of civilians in Gaza. The trends the book exposes are alarming and the first-hand examples of censorship relayed in these essays are shocking. However, this book, like Manufacturing Consent, gives readers the tools to see past the spin and propaganda. By giving us a better understanding of false balance, the erasure of Palestinian voices, misleading language, decontextualization, lack of verification and self-censorship, we become inoculated against these tactics. When Genocide Wasn’t News is essential reading for our time, and asks that we demand better from our media.
Martin Lukacs is an award-winning journalist, author, and managing editor of The Breach. He is the author of the books The Poilievre Project: A Radical Blueprint for Corporate Rule and The Trudeau Formula: Seduction and Betrayal in an Age of Discontent. He was previously an environmental writer for The Guardian, and he has written for The New York Review of Books, Toronto Star, The Walrus, and other Canadian publications.
Dania Majid is the co-founder and president of the Arab Canadian Lawyers Association and the lead author of its 2022 report “Anti-Palestinian Racism: Naming, Framing and Manifestations.” She is the co-founder and organizer of Vote Palestine, as well as co-founder and artistic director of the Toronto Palestine Film Festival. Dania is also a housing rights lawyer with a legal aid clinic in Ontario and serves on the steering committee of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – Ontario Chapter.
Jason Toney is the director of media advocacy at Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), where he leads the Media Accountability Project, monitoring Canadian media coverage of Palestine. He has been active in Palestine solidarity for more than a decade. Jason previously worked in independent publishing with Black Rose Books and Daraja Press. He is the editor of Take the City and has published essays on media, municipalism, Hannah Arendt, and Murray Bookchin.
Publisher: Breach Books (July 10, 2025)
Paperback: 8″ x 5″ | 264 pages
ISBN: 9781069357823
Jeff Dupuis is a writer and editor living in Toronto. He is the author of The Creature X Mystery novels and numerous short stories, which have been published in The Ex-Puritan and The Temz Review among others. Jeff is the editor, alongside A.G. Pasquella, of the anthology Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, which will be published in 2025 by Dundurn Press.
