HonestReporting Canada persuades ‘CBC’ to retract Palestinian history claim

An article published by CBC News titled “B.C. minister under fire for comments about Middle East before creation of Israeli state” received multiple corrections following a critique from HonestReporting Canada.

The reporting focused on comments by Selina Robinson, British Columbia’s minister of post-secondary education. She said many young people think that Israel is “a crappy piece of land with nothing on it.” Following a backlash, Robinson later apologized for her comment.

The piece, written by senior writer Rhianna Schmunk, originally included a sentence that read: “Critics say remarks like Robinson’s dismiss people who lived in the area for tens of thousands of years before the creation of Israel in 1948, including Palestinians, Muslims and Christians.”

HonestReporting Canada wrote, “While anti-Israel critics have made all kinds of absurd accusations, this is no excuse for Schmunk to simply repeat ahistorical nonsense and present it as if it had some basis in reality.”

After learning of the inaccuracy of the sentence, the CBC revised it to read: “Critics say remarks like Robinson’s dismiss people who lived in the area for thousands of years before the creation of Israel in 1948, including Palestinians, Muslims, Christians and Jews.”

HonestReporting Canada pointed to another passage in the article, writing that “while it is true that anti-Israel activists do refer to Israel’s rebirth in 1948 as a catastrophe, or nakba, in Arabic, Schmunk’s retelling of their allegations leaves much to be desired.”