The National Post systematically rewrites wire stories to include loaded anti-Palestinian language, omit the context of occupation, and frame stories around Israeli viewpoints, a comprehensive data analysis shows.
The groups Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and The Media Bias Project of Tech for Palestine (T4P) analyzed 197 Canadian Press (CP) news stories about Palestine and compared them to the version published by the National Post. The data gathered drew from articles published between October 9, 2023, to September 18, 2024.
After learning that a CP story published by the National Post had been significantly altered, such that a CP author’s byline was removed, the study was conducted to learn if such edits were a common practice.
The study looked at the frequency of specific terms and phrases in the National Post versions of CP articles to better understand the content, scale, and scope of these edits. The terms analyzed were selected by T4P and CJPME based on existing observations of how the newspaper’s articles differ from other establishment media in their use of charged language when reporting on Palestine and Israel.
Neither the National Post nor Canadian Press responded to requests for comment on this story.
CJPME’s Media Accountability Project (MAP) has written dozens of letters to the Canadian Press expressing alarm about pro-Israel bias in their reporting. The edits made by National Post show how the outlet has deliberately twisted already-concerning content to further entrench anti-Palestinian bias in Canadian media.
The study reveals that over the course of a year, continuing in 2025, National Post made hundreds of silent edits while keeping a CP byline on articles. In some cases, CP journalist bylines were kept despite sweeping edits.
‘Loaded language’
National Post’s changes to Canadian Press coverage include both additions and deletions, nearly all of which are geared toward shaping the coverage in a more pro-Israel direction.
CJPME and T4P found that nearly all of the key words or phrases they were tracking appeared less frequently in the National Post versions than they did in the original CP wire stories. On average, National Post used these key terms 31 per cent less often.
Despite recommendations from journalism organizations like the International Press Institute that advise avoiding “loaded language” when reporting on Palestine and Israel, National Post regularly inserts charged words and phrases and removes neutral descriptors.
CJPME and T4P identified instances of the following changes: terms such as Palestinian “militants” or “fighters” replaced with “terrorists.” “Pro-Palestine” changed to “anti-Israel.” “Occupied Palestinian territory” or “Occupied West Bank” removed or substituted with “disputed territory.” “Allegedly” inserted to cast doubt on documented Israeli war crimes and Palestinian narratives. Doubt introduced regarding the Palestinian death toll, claiming it has not been “independently verified” or adding “Hamas-run” to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The investigation also found at least 20 definitive instances of a form of the word “terror” being added to National Post versions of CP articles that originally didn’t contain it, and at least 10 cases of the phrase “pro-Palestinian” being changed to “anti-Israel.”
One term completely bucked the trend of decreasing values and has a striking increase across the nearly 200 articles—“rape.” CP used the term in 12 articles, whereas it appears in 17 National Post versions. This is a 42-per-cent increase.
While terms like “Israel” and “Palestine” both decreased in occurrence at a similar rate, others fell out dramatically. References to the occupied Palestinian territories, the West Bank, and other terms that highlight the Israeli military’s occupation of Palestinian land decreased by a staggering 68 per cent in National Post articles.
Only nine references to the occupied territories and West Bank made it into the 197 National Post articles, compared to 28 references in the CP versions of the same articles.
References to the Nakba appeared four times in CP but only once (in a quote) in National Post articles.
One article by CP’s Mia Rabson states that MPs wrote a letter to Trudeau “citing violations of international law against civilians in the Gaza Strip.” The National Post version of the wire story does not include the phrase “against civilians in the Gaza Strip.” The sentence stops.
In the next sentence, the CP version states that “Some other Liberal MPs have said a ceasefire is complicated.” The National Post extends that sentence to add: “a ceasefire is complicated because Hamas is a designated terrorist organization according to the Canadian government.” Despite these significant differences, Mia Rabson remains the author on the National Post version.
In conversations with journalists, CJPME learned that the changes made at the National Post to CP articles are believed to be exceptional. These editorial practices are not systematically applied to other types of coverage by paper, as far as we know.
Reframing the narrative, one headline at a time
Editors at National Post also changed headlines. More than 60 per cent of Canadian Press articles analyzed had modified headlines. While many of the changes are innocuous, others reshape the story entirely.
National Post headlines featured the words “Israel,” “Israeli,” and “Israelis” 32 per cent more often than headlines for the same set of Canadian Press articles (47 for CP compared to 62 for the National Post).
One example of how the National Post altered headlines to serve its editorial focus is the change it made to the Canadian Press headline for a November 2023 story that read: “Several charged after Scotiabank Giller Prize gala interrupted during televised bash.” The Post version is more loaded: “Three people charged after Scotiabank Giller Prize gala interrupted by anti-Israel protesters.”
In another case, the CP article headline read “Canada abstains from UN motion calling on Israel to end occupation of Gaza, West Bank.” The National Post changed it to: “Canada abstains from UN motion calling for Israel to leave Gaza, West Bank within a year”—removing the essential context of occupation. National Post editors also removed two other mentions of occupation within the article.
While changing the headlines of wire stories is not unusual, it is not standard practice in most newspapers to introduce biased language.
The investigation by CJPME and T4P also noted a significant number of ledes—introductory sentences—showing up in National Post articles that did not appear in the original CP versions. These tended to use highly charged language.
Canadian Press journalists were often kept as the author by the National Post even after the paper made significant editorial changes to their filed stories. The investigation noted at least one case in which a CP journalist’s name was quietly dropped following a formal complaint about the article with the National Post in which the author was CC’d.
When journalist names are dropped, the Post still keeps “The Canadian Press” as the author name, despite the changes to article content.
Trickle-down effects
There are trickle-down effects to the editorial interventions by the National Post. When an article’s body is altered (unlike with headline changes), the piece is severed from the wire service’s updates.
This means that when CP adds new information to an article, that content isn’t automatically updated to versions that have already been edited. This is a feature of all wire content to prevent overwriting the edits that a specific outlet has made to match space needs, house style, or—in some cases—editorial slant.
It also means that if the National Post makes any change at all in the body of an article, such as switching “militant” to “terrorist,” National Post readers will no longer see updates to an article if CP makes one. CP updates articles regularly, especially on stories that are ongoing. If CP makes a correction, but the paper has already edited that article, Post readers will be left unaware of the change.
In one example, a CP article states at the bottom: “Note to readers: This is a corrected story. An earlier version said [Ghada] Sasa’s grandfather left his home in the West Bank during the 1948 war. In fact, he was expelled from his home in Ramla, a city in what is now Israel, during that conflict.”
Because the National Post edited the article before that update, the error remains and the article reads: “Sasa, a Palestinian Canadian whose grandfather left the West Bank during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.”
A challenge for this data analysis that is related to the stoppage of automatic updates to edited articles is that it is difficult to know if the National Post deliberately deletes Palestinian perspectives, or if this is a consequence of cutting off the update stream.
CJPME and T4P observed hundreds of testimonies from Palestinians and their allies missing from National Post versions of CP articles, but was unable to definitively conclude if this was intentional, because we do not have access to all the iterations of a CP article. CP does have a database of all article versions, but requests to CP for access to this database went unanswered.
Unequal application: Jewish News Syndicate
In contrast, the National Post has proven reluctant to change the content of other wire services, like the Jewish News Syndicate (JNS), which it regularly publishes.
JNS was founded with the explicit purpose of publishing pro-Israel stories to combat a perceived “bias against Israel” in the media. To CJPME’s knowledge, Postmedia papers are the only establishment outlets that publish JNS content.
JNS relies overwhelmingly on Israeli sources and its language is not aligned with accepted word choices in Canada. For example, JNS refers to the occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria.”
The National Post does not systematically edit JNS articles.
Following a complaint with the National NewsMedia Council, the National Post’s editor-in-chief Rob Roberts told CJPME that “the National Post is entirely comfortable labelling JNS news content as news—it may be from a particular perspective but is fact-based.”
In a follow-up, Roberts continued, “not every story a news outlet publishes is going to include all context that all readers might like to see. The Maple, for example, doesn’t always include Israeli perspectives in its stories. I fully stand by the JNS coverage we’ve published, but I will also add the National Post also publishes news stories by The Associated Press and others (including by our own writers) that provide more context of the nature you mention.”
After a CJPME complaint to formal ethics councils, the National Post did belatedly correct portions of a March 2025 Jewish News Syndicate article about Israel’s attack on Hamdan Ballal, co-director of No Other Land. The JNS version of the article still omits any Palestinian perspectives, only citing Israeli military officials. However, the National Post added three paragraphs that detail Ballal’s testimony, which contradicts the Israeli military’s claims.
‘An explicitly Zionist newspaper’
In a 2024 interview with the Jewish News Syndicate, Roberts acknowledged that his outlet was founded “as an explicitly Zionist newspaper.”
In May 2025, Roberts wrote a news article about Israel without clearly disclosing that he was on a trip in the country sponsored by the Exigent Foundation—a non-profit founded by Larry Maher and Vivian Bercovici that finances “educational trips to the Middle East” for media, corporations, academics, and policy-makers. The foundation describes itself as concerned with “the surge of leftist and Islamist extremism following the October 7th Massacre.”
Roberts wrote in his news report that a statement by an Israeli military official was given to “reporters on Sunday, travelling in Israel on a trip sponsored by the Exigent Foundation.” He failed to mention, however, that he was one of those reporters.
In later articles during the trip, Roberts did confirm that he was on a sponsored trip alongside other National Post journalists.
According to Ethics Guidelines by the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), journalists are expected to “resist any outside efforts to influence the news,” “pay [their] own way,” and “disclose to the audience” when it is not possible for the outlet to pay. Roberts’ confusing disclosure, not to mention the decision to take the trip in the first place, are in violation of CAJ ethics.
Roberts also serves as a Professional Member of the National NewsMedia Council (NNC), Canada’s self-regulatory body for news media responsible for adjudicating disputes between newspapers and readers.
More than 40 per cent of the complaints upheld by the NCC—where it sided with the complainant—were against Postmedia newspapers. Postmedia is the parent company of the National Post, its flagship paper.
Roberts is also familiar with standard practices related to wire content, as he previously worked for the Canadian Press, starting in 2015, as its Atlantic bureau chief.
A deeply entrenched bias
CJPME confirmed that at least one 2025 National Post article so far has continued the practice of modifying CP content. In January, a CP article was modified to label Hamas a “terrorist group” (where the original had called it a “militant group”) and added the lede: “Hate crimes targeting Jews and Muslims have risen across Canada since the war started after a Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas.”
The “Palestine exception” has become the norm in Canadian establishment media. This joint analysis by CJPME and T4P adds to a growing body of evidence exposing a pervasive anti-Palestinian bias in mainstream journalism.
Already-inconsistent reporting from the Canadian Press is being further distorted by the National Post, which seems intent on enforcing a rigid editorial line—one that would never be tolerated in coverage of other issues.
Most troubling is that Canada’s media accountability institutions seem unwilling or ill-equipped to respond.
Faced with a flood of coverage that violates basic journalistic standards, the public is left with limited options. Persistent, informed critique, and the creation of independent institutions capable of challenging and correcting this deeply entrenched bias will be key.
The Breach’s investigations don’t just inform our readers—they force the powerful to react.
An exposé on blood plasma privatization led to national headlines. Our revelations about the government’s cozy connections to Big Pharma sparked a parliamentary probe. A report on high-tech price-fixing by mega landlords resulted in a criminal investigation.
From activists to elected officials, people are using The Breach’s journalism to push for transformative change.
– Dru Oja Jay, Board President, The Breach
Palestine | CBC says killing of Palestinians doesn’t merit terms ‘murderous,’ ‘brutal’
Canadian Media | Palestinian deaths count for less in Canada’s newspapers. Data proves it
In ‘covert op,’ Israeli consulate backed poll inflating support for Gaza war
8 comments
Comments are closed.
If news organizations presented only FACTS instead of biased innuendo then no article would ever be rewritten. As it stands right now we news-consumers have to tease the facts out of the mass of bias. Did NP leave the FACTS alone? Yes they did. All that they changed was the bias, and liberals can’t stand that.
The venture vulture Postmedia, and its wacky editorial journalistic malpractice.
I wonder if the organizations did the same diligence with the Toronto Star. I would bet the same articles altered by the Post have also been altered by the Star, only framing the Palestinians in a better light.
Great reporting, especially your top piece on the National Post. Have you done a similar analysis of CBC reporting? I suspect you may find the same pro-Israel narrative.
In a recent NP in The Van. Sun, a JNS article specifically called “I—-l” (the Zionist entity) “the Jewish state” which unnecessarily connects Jews to the Zionist entity, yet in another article, condemns graffiti on a Jewish bldg. You can’t have it both ways.
Thank you for exposing the pro-Israel narrative analysis and the actual severe deathly harms to Palestinians by Israel.
At this moment, the legacy media is spewing so much conform and propaganda that it’s hard to imagine that people won’t find out eventually. It’s so obvious from other unbiassed sources on YouTube and other media. Israel is almost being destroyed yet they say they are winning the battle with Iran.
This is my corrected message-At this moment, the legacy media is spewing so misinformation and propaganda that it’s hard to imagine that people won’t find out eventually. It’s so obvious from other unbiassed sources on YouTube and other media that Israel is almost being destroyed yet they say they are winning the battle with Iran.