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Lazy, or sloppy, or stupid . . .
[or] plain and simple, biased or anti-Semitic.
— Izzy Asper on the world’s leading newspapers and broadcasters
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this website]
Toronto, November 1, 2002
Asper’s charges of media bias ‘bizarre’
By DOUG SAUNDERS
[Israel Asper] AFTER a long, angry speech by Winnipeg media mogul Izzy Asper, which accused most of the world’s media of being insufficiently pro-Israeli and implied that reporters are anti-Semitic, bewildered journalists yesterday struggled to respond.
Mr. Asper’s Wednesday night speech, which was reprinted prominently in his city papers and the National Post, effectively positioned Mr. Asper and his newspapers to the far right of most of the world’s major media.
As with speeches he delivered last month with former Israeli prime minister
Benjamin Netanyahu, it repeated the
Israeli Likud party’s conservative and aggressively anti-Arab views.
This time, though, he named names, accusing the CBC, The New York Times,
The Washington Post, the Associated
Press and Reuters wire services, ABC, CBS,
NBC, CNN, BBC, the British
Guardian, Independent, Evening
Standard and Daily Mirror
newspapers, as well as ITV and Sky News networks, and other outlets of being
“lazy, or sloppy, or stupid . . .
[or] plain and simple, biased or anti-Semitic.”
He singled out the CBC and its former
Middle East reporter Neil
MacDonald, accusing them of providing
“the most slanted and biased information” and of routinely practising “dishonest reporting.” In particular, he demanded that reporters in the Mideast, such as Mr.
Macdonald, refer to all Palestinian militants as “terrorists.”
Tony Burman, head of the CBC-TV news division, said yesterday that he considered Mr. Asper’s opinions “bizarre,” and that he would be demanding space to respond to the accusations in the
Asper-owned papers.
“To suggest that most of the
world’s media are involved in a
conspiracy against Israel, it’s just a
totally extreme conception on Asper’s
part.”
He said it had been the position of the
CBC and most major media outlets for 25
years not to refer to militants on either side as terrorists, regardless of their actions.
He also said that the CBC receives a commensurate number of complaints from pro-Palestinian viewers about its Middle
East coverage, all of which are adjudicated by an independent ombudsman.
“There is something profoundly ironic about being told off about media bias by someone like Izzy Asper,” said Mr. Burman, apparently referring to Mr. Asper’s former practice of forcing his city papers to print company-written editorials that expressed the owner’s views.
on this website:
Index
to our dossier on the origins of
anti-semitism
David
Irving: Radical’s Diary, Monday,
October 21, 2002
Globe
and Mail extract from max Hastings
memoirs: Paint it Black
Official
Biography of Harold Israel Asper, who
now controls most Canadian
newspapers