CBC OMBUDSMAN: Reporting the Facts
The complainant, Diane Bederman, objected to a report by Derek Stoffel who was at a protest in Ramallah on the one-hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. She thought that by reporting the Palestinian position, he was implying Israel did not have a right to exist. He attributed the statement to the views of the Palestinians. There was no violation of policy.
COMPLAINT
You complained about a news report by CBC News Middle East Correspondent Derek Stoffel. He was reporting from Ramallah during a Palestinian protest marking the one-hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. You based your criticism on a post from the HonestReporting Canada website. You thought that by conveying the Palestinian position, Mr. Stoffel, in the words of HonestReporting, had “implicitly cast doubt on Israel’s right to exist.” He had done so, the post continued, by “supposedly referencing Palestinian claims stating that the Balfour Declaration ‘led to the military occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israelis.’”(sic) The post contested the statement, as Mr. Stoffel put it, that the Declaration granted political rights to Palestinians. It also said by referencing a claim that Israel has militarily occupying Palestinian territories since 1948, Mr. Stoffel was “tacitly denying Israel’s right to exist.”
MANAGEMENT RESPONSE
Jack Nagler, the Director for Journalistic Public Accountability and Engagement, replied to your concerns. He provided a broader quote from the segment broadcast on CBC News Network:
Palestinians have gathered in communities across the West Bank including here in Ramallah where this small demonstration is under way to protest against the Balfour Declaration. That was the Declaration a hundred years ago by the British government to express the British government’s support of the establishment of a homeland for the Jewish people in historic Palestine. It was also supposed to grant rights to the Palestinians, but the Palestinians demonstrating here today say that has not been the case and it has led to the military occupation of the Palestinian people by the Israelis.
He told you that it is “wholly inaccurate to claim that Mr. Stoffel ‘implicitly cast doubt’ on Israel’s right to exist.” He pointed out he explicitly attributed these views to the people who were demonstrating in Ramallah and elsewhere.
Continue reading this on the CBC website, where it was first published.
