HRC Launches Montreal
Office & French Monitoring Unit
April 25, 2008
To view this alert in French please
click here
HonestReporting Canada (HRC) is pleased to announce the launch of our
Montreal office and expansion of our monitoring efforts to include
French-language Canadian media coverage of Israel.
“In expanding our brand to Quebec, we’ve attained national and bilingual status
and we’ve brought our grassroots approach to combat anti-Israel media bias in
French Canada,” said Mike Fegelman, Executive Director of HonestReporting
Canada.
“The French media are typically less restrained in how they describe Israel and
this is of a particular concern because they obtain a majority of their content
from European news sources which are traditionally more critical of Israel.”
HRC is also pleased to announce the appointment of Paul Agoston as Assistant
Director overseeing operations in Montreal. Paul joins HonestReporting Canada
with over 10 years of marketing and communications experience. To contact Paul,
please email
paul@honestreporting.ca.
If you would like to help Israel in the battle for public opinion by monitoring
and responding to French-language anti-Israel media bias, please join
our French monitoring unit by
clicking here.
HRC Complaint: AFP Retracts; Le Journal De Montreal Ignores
On April 7th, French newswire Agence France-Presse reported that a
Palestinian child was killed by Israeli fire in the Gaza Strip. Citing unnamed
medical sources and witnesses, the report claimed that “Israeli artillery fire”
had killed four-year-old Abdullah Mohammed Baher. There was no evidence
to support these baseless allegations.
Furthermore, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
concluded that as a result of a “misuse of weapons by armed groups”
Baher was killed and his brother was wounded by an errant Palestinian
mortar shell directed at Israeli cities and not by IDF tank fire.
Likewise, media reports by
the Associated Press (see
here and
here) and La Presse Canadienne (see
here) noted that “It was not immediately clear whether the boy was killed by
Israeli forces operating in the area or by Palestinian militants who may
have misfired a mortar shell.”
The Journal de
Montreal, Quebec’s largest circulation daily newspaper, was just one media
outlet which
reprinted the AFP report (see right) under the following headline:
"TUÉ
PAR LES ISRAÉLIENS"
or in English “KILLED BY THE ISRAELIS.”
HonestReporting
Canada brought our concerns to the attention of AFP editors in Paris and Le
Journal de Montreal editors in Quebec. To our satisfaction, AFP promptly
investigated the matter and retracted their original report. On April 21, AFP
set the record straight by reporting that Baher was killed by “mortar
fire from Palestinian militants.”
This
report was sent out over the AFP wire and was picked up by numerous media
outlets including the French magazine
Paris Match,
Dow Jones Newswire, La Presna (in
Spanish) and as far as the Arabian Peninsula in the
Oman Tribune.
But
to our dismay and despite AFP’s formal retraction and several attempts by HRC to
remedy the situation with Le Journal de Montreal, their editors have
elected to ignore our requests to feature this AFP retraction.
How You Can Make a
Difference
Ask the Journal de Montreal
to retract their April 7th report entitled “TUÉ
PAR LES ISRAÉLIENS”
and call on the paper to feature
AFP’s formal retraction. Send letters (preferably in French or in English)
to the Journal’s Information Director, George Kalogerakis at:
gkalogerakis@journalmtl.com or call (514) 521-4545 x 4927 to voice your
concerns.
Pointers for contacting Le Journal: State your position clearly in your own
words, remain rational and polite, and contact us at
action@honestreporting.ca to tell us you took action. To be
considered for publication, letters should include sender's name and contact
information for verification purposes.
