CTV National News has featured 62 per cent more Israeli than Palestinian voices, aired racist stereotypes about Arabs, and allowed Israeli military officials to make false claims without pushback in its month of coverage since Oct. 7, a comprehensive analysis by The Breach has found.
The broadcast, which is the most-watched national news show in Canada, even failed to identify 41 per cent of its Palestinian speakers by name—while identifying the vast majority of Israeli speakers with their names as well as family relationships and personal connections to violence they’ve experienced.
CTV’s prioritizing of Israeli perspectives, which has included giving Israeli and Israeli-Canadian guests more airtime than Palestinians, is particularly striking given the scale of Israel’s current invasion of Gaza and its history of human rights violations and military occupation of Palestinian territories.
The Breach’s analysis shows that the Canadian media’s double standards extend beyond CBC News, which has taken the majority of heat from critics since Israel began its bombardment of Gaza last month. In Montreal on Saturday, activists blockaded the entrance to CBC’s building and doused its doorways in red paint, while the CTV office across the street was unscathed.
The Breach’s analysis found that two-thirds of CTV National News broadcasts from Oct. 7 to Nov. 7 featured more Israeli voices than Palestinian voices.
In total, 133 Israelis and Canadians with connections to Israel—including Israeli politicians, military officials, and the relatives of people killed or taken hostage by Hamas—have appeared on the broadcasts.
By contrast, only 82 Palestinians—including civilians and officials, as well as Palestinians’ Canadian relatives—have appeared.
The Breach counted both interviews and recorded press conferences and speeches in the tally.
Despite the higher number of Israeli guests, more Palestinians—34 versus only 25 Israelis—were presented without any information about who they are, including their names.
In one notable example, CTV’s Oct. 14 broadcast gave more time to a Canadian who experienced cancelled flights than to the only Palestinian interviewed in Gaza.
The Canadian individual who had just left Tel Aviv appeared for 10 seconds and was identified by name. The Palestinian doctor, who CTV didn’t identify by name, was given eight seconds to explain, “We had to bring refrigerators from ice cream factories so the bodies don’t rot.”
A spokesperson for CTV did not respond to a detailed list of questions sent by The Breach.
CTV is owned by the multi-billion-dollar company Bell Media.
False claims, racist language aired without criticism
United Nations experts have warned of a “grave risk of genocide” if a ceasefire is not reached.
Israel government ministers have used racist language—describing Palestinians as “human animals” and “children of darkness”—and speculated about “flattening” the entire Gaza Strip to make room for Israeli settlers.
CTV’s broadcasts on Oct. 8 and Oct. 30 indulged similar language, airing video of Israeli officials describing Hamas’ “savagery” and “barbarism” without providing context about, or describing in similar terms, Israel’s ongoing blockade and occupation of Gaza and its latest bombing campaign. CTV anchor Sandie Rinaldo also used the word “savage” on Oct. 12 to describe Hamas’ attack.
Israel withdrew civilians and military from Gaza in 2005, but the UN continues to consider it the occupying power because it controls Gaza’s airspace, borders, and waters.
While using Hamas’ violence to justify the dehumanization of an entire population, Israeli officials are also sanitizing the Israeli military’s violence—and CTV anchors have let them do it without comment.
On the Oct. 14 broadcast, an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) lieutenant colonel claimed that Israel adheres to international law. But UN officials and legal experts had already said that Israel’s siege on Gaza, which is depriving civilians of the necessities of life, was in violation of international humanitarian laws. Israel’s widespread bombing of civilian infrastructure like housing is also prohibited by international law, a UN expert has warned.
Apparently unaware of this context, Rinaldo accepted the IDF official’s claim without pushing back.
On an earlier broadcast, anchor Heather Wright failed to interject when a retired Canadian general made the same claim.
“Hamas abides by no rules of law, no law of armed conflict…Israel, on the other hand, tends to do so,” David Fraser said.
The IDF official also said on Oct. 14 that Hamas is responsible for poverty in Gaza without pushback.
Gaza’s economy has been increasingly crippled since Israel and Egypt started a blockade on goods and people moving in and out of the territory in 2005.
A recent International Monetary Fund report stated that “lifting of the blockade and easing of the Israeli-imposed restrictions are essential.”
No segment on realities of apartheid and occupation
CTV’s overrepresentation of Israelis is wildly out of sync with the disproportionate suffering of Palestinians.
More than 1,200 Israelis were killed by Hamas militants in their Oct. 7 attack and the Israeli death toll has not risen significantly since then.
But Israel’s military continues to kill hundreds of Palestinians every day. The total number of Palestinians killed by Israel now stands at more than 11,000 people.
The state has also blocked access to food, water and electricity for the Strip’s entire population of 2.2 million.
On Wednesday, the UN’s special rapporteur on the right to housing said that Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilian homes is a war crime. “Such acts amount to war crimes and when directed against a civilian population, they also amount to crimes against humanity,” Balakrishnan Rajagopal said. Israel has destroyed or damaged 45 per cent of all housing in Gaza, Rajagopal said, displacing 1.5 million people.
A displaced Palestinian mother Imm Mahmoud recently told Al Jazeera that children are suffering diarrhea, coughs and colds because they’ve been forced to bathe in polluted seawater.
Lung infections and intestinal flus are spreading quickly among refugees packed into overcrowded places of refuge, doctor Khalil al-Degran also told the network.
Palestinians in the Gaza Strip live in the most densely populated area on earth because two-thirds of the population are descendants of refugees who were displaced by Israeli forces and settlers.
Israel also denies basic rights to Palestinians and regularly seizes their land and property, a system which human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch say constitutes apartheid.
Neither of these realities has warranted a segment on CTV National News.
When I went to journalism school 10 years ago, my parents thought that they would eventually read my articles in The Montreal Gazette. Today, that newspaper is a husk of its former self. But I get to explain that I’m working towards critical, independent, and sustainable journalism.
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– Amanda Siino, Development Director, The Breach
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The Breach is clearly a pro Palestinian rag. Your idea of balanced reporting tries to open the doors to anti establishment criticism including almost, but not quite, antisemitism. But do not fear. You have many others who offer the same one sided view of the attempt to demolish western culture. I hope that one day you will come to realize what your slander tries to do and have regrets.
I suggest that you look a bit deeper into the reporting of The Breach. It is an independent news group reporting on many different issues that are important to Canadians. They do not get funding from the government so they can and DO report what they see as the truth of a situation. I am grateful for their tireless work and hope it will continue.
To conflate anti-semitism with being against an apartheid state is simply irresponsible. What is happening in Gaza and the West Bank, occupied territories (which is in itself illegal) is genocide. Maybe try to open your heart up to that reality.
You need to be more balanced with your reporting. Maybe read some history? Not just recent history, but the history of the Middle East.
It is not just the Jews but all civilized people who must now agree: “Never again.” Those who desecrate our public places and poison our universities, both by racist malice and by silent cowardice, must understand that the world knows that the Palestine they seek is one built on the funeral pyre of an Israel transformed into a death camp and the methods of Hamas that they are implicitly extolling are, if anything, even more wicked and more inexcusable than the heinous crimes of the Nazis and their collaborators. What is afoot is such a colossal evil it is a deadly challenge to the moral soul of western civilization. Fortunately, it is not being led by a great military and industrial power like Germany, and Israel possesses the ability to teach Hamas a lesson the world will not forget.
THANK YOU Martin Lucaks and the Breach for the Israeli/Palestinian honest coverage. It is shameful what our gov’t has done and is doing. I attach statement by Gabor Mate, for your inspiration. https://x.com/BrownNaila/status/1712809533322498366?s=20
Thank you for telling it as it is!
Thank you for showing us the truth behind the calculated genocide of Palestinians by the colonial Jewish state.