Merve Aydogan
17 October 2024•Update: 17 October 2024
HAMILTON, Canada
Arfa Rana, a former journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), resigned in protest because of the network’s coverage of Israel's relentless bombing of Palestinians, which she calls "complicit" in the genocide in the Gaza Strip.
Rana expressed frustration with what she described as CBC’s biased coverage that ignored historical context and failed to recognize the full scale of Palestinian suffering.
"I was appalled by CBC’s lack of historical context between Israel and Palestine and the language used to defend Israel’s massacre of Palestinians," Rana wrote on the Mondoweiss, an independent news website that informs readers about developments in Israel, Palestine and related US foreign policy.
“The CBC Language Guide on the Middle East is a catastrophic oxymoron,” she said, criticizing its approach to neutralizing reporting on the region and she pointed to a lack of acknowledgment of Israel's violations of international law.
Despite raising her concerns internally, Rana said she was marginalized and sidelined in the newsroom.
Revealing the emotional toll of working in such an environment, Rana said that "by the time I resigned, I had become a shell of myself."
She expressed hope that her experience to encourage other journalists to question how mainstream outlets shape public opinion and narrative.
"Now is the time for journalists to use their power to change the opinions of the masses through the stories they write. After all, truth-telling is not only a moral human obligation, but for journalists, it is also a revolutionary act," she noted.
