Neil Macdonald Commentary* * Reprinted in Your Media with Neil Macdonald's permission. (In response to Leonard Asper's speech) A few years ago, a future Israeli cabinet minister, irritated with U.S. policy but evidently unwilling to discuss it substantively, called then American ambassador Martin Indyk a ''Jew boy.'' It was a nasty label, and it stung. The politician was basically calling a Jewish-American ambassador an Uncle Tom. Mr. Indyk reportedly replied that the last time someone called him that, he'd punched his antagonist in the nose. I sympathize with Mr. Indyk's sentiments. This week, in a speech in Winnipeg, as excerpted in the National Post, Leonard Asper, head of the CanWest newspaper and television chains, denounced my reporting from the Middle East, linking it to "hints of anti-semitism in the Canadian media." His father, Israel Asper, made a similar connection in a speech last year. It's a dreadful accusation, one loaded with hateful, historical baggage. During my time in the Middle East for CBC, I heard it tossed at reporters a lot, usually by angry people who couldn't be bothered to marshal facts in support of their arguments. Leonard Asper marches in that tradition. Mr. Asper said many news reporters are anti-Semites, an attitude he attributes to their 'Marxist' mindset. He then singled me out, and cited a passage from a story I filed on Hezbollah last year from Beirut. "Neil Macdonald of the CBC pompously, but dangerously, suggested Hezbollah was a 'national liberation movement victimized by unfair smears cast around by supporters of the Jewish state,' '' wrote Mr. Asper. He went on: "No reference to Israel, just 'the Jewish state.' " Now, from the transcript of my story, here is the actual quote: "Of course, what this all really boils down to is the old question of what constitutes terrorism. Is Hezbollah a national liberation movement, or, as Israel and its supporters maintain, a murderous global menace? To many people in this part of the world (the Arab world), to label Hezbollah a terrorist organization is to choose sides in the defining conflict of the Middle East." A perfectly accurate characterization of a bitter debate, I thought. (I did not use the term Jewish state, and what if I had? Israel proudly calls itself that). But in Mr. Asper's crusading hunt for Marxists and anti-Semites in the media, the accuracy of the quote hardly mattered. He repeated what he wanted to believe I'd said. Now, Leonard Asper is not a journalist, so perhaps I shouldn't expect him to get a quote right. But for him to mangle it so thoroughly, and then go on to lambaste the media for laziness and bias, is profoundly ironic. I had actually been sent to Beirut to match a National Post story. The story had quoted Hezbollah chief, Hassan Nasrallah, as having advocated the export of suicide bombings worldwide. The Canadian government had been considering banning Hezbollah based on the Nasrallah quotes. But Hassan Nasrallah, I discovered in Beirut, had said no such thing. Canadian embassy staff in Beirut came to the same conclusion. (The Canadian government eventually found other reasons, perhaps perfectly good reasons, to ban Hezbollah as a terrorist group). But it all demonstrated the difference between Mr. Asper's approach to the Middle East and the CBC's. His paper relied on a freelancer who wrote, from London, what the Aspers wanted to believe. We maintain a bureau in the region, and investigated the story first-hand. I've remained silent for the past year as the Aspers and their editorials have relentlessly attacked me and the CBC, but enough is enough. This latest salvo is inaccurate, loathsome, and defamatory. It merits an apology. I don't expect one from the Aspers, though. I expect more bullying, more bombast, more ideological, anti-journalistic nonsense. I used to work for the newspapers they now own. Several of my ex-colleagues, still there, tell me they find the Aspers' approach to journalism an embarrassment. But they cannot speak publicly. Thank heavens I can. Neil Macdonald, Washington correspondent for CBC-TV News, finished a five-year tour as Middle East correspondent last spring. |