Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Hamas and Canadian 'journalism' II

Following up on the Globe and Mail editorial (scroll down) on Hamas which appears to contain misinformation obtained from a website run by an Israeli settler . . . there is no follow-up. Despite chatter on the internet, the Globe is acting like there is no problem at all. It seems to have not the slightest interest in addressing the issue, and acts like it is completely unaware that there is an issue. The media columnist for the competing Toronto Star has now written about it, and even tried to pry something out of Marcus Gee, without any success. The secret to dealing with being caught in a lie is to pretend you never heard about the complaints.

I'm sure that any eventual response will be along the lines that this is just a technical slip, and that Hamas has always had similar videos and similar ideas. The problem is that Hamas is currently in the middle of repositioning itself from being a revolutionary movement to being a 'legitimate' governing party. The presence or absence of such a video on the Hamas website at this critical time may well be an indication of an important and politically relevant change in Hamas internal policies. Misreporting on this issue, particularly when the misreporting is based on unchecked allegations from an obviously biased party, is a very serious matter of journalistic ethics (don't laugh - I'm told there is such a thing).