Canadian journalists who have received online threats after being targeted by a pro-Israel group are being encouraged to report any such threats to a press freedom monitoring project.
The Canada Press Freedom Project (CPFP), which is run by the publication J-Source, regularly gathers and publishes data about incidents of online threats and other press freedom violations experienced by media workers.
Last week, J-Source published a call on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) explicitly encouraging journalists who have received online threats after being targeted by HonestReporting Canada (HRC), a pro-Israel group that brands itself as a “grass-roots” media watchdog, to get in touch via CPFP’s online form.
An article published by La Converse this week shared several accounts from journalists who have been targeted by HRC, often via mass email campaigns that contain what one reporter described as “unfounded” requests for edits to stories.
One reporter, Imam Kassam, told La Converse that after she was targeted by HRC in 2021, she received several weeks of what she considers to be “online harassment” — but was offered no support from her employer.
As previously reported by The Maple, HRC’s executive director has declared that the organization seeks to “create a digital army for Israel” and that it aims to “act as Israel’s sword and shield.”
Davide Mastracci
The organization’s staff and subscribers typically do this by scanning Canadian media for content that they believe is biased against Israel. Such cases can be reported through a form on the organization’s website, and are then examined by HRC’s staff.
HRC sometimes reaches out to the outlet in question posing a demand, and in some cases may make a call to its more than 60,000 subscribers to email the target outlet with similar messaging. HRC claimed that its campaigns played a role in getting two Palestinian journalists, including one who was on maternity leave, fired in October 2023.
The organization’s tactics and messaging have also escalated beyond email campaigns. Earlier this month, HRC used a topless photo of a Toronto-based immigration lawyer who regularly advocates for Palestinian rights in a graphic posted to HRC’s X page.
In September, HRC sent out a fundraising email announcing that it planned to launch a “Name and Shame” database of “anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activists.” It was described as being among several projects that HRC hoped would “restore deterrence and procure consequences against our adversaries.”
However, a few days later HRC sent out a nearly identical fundraising email that contained no mention of creating the “Name and Shame” database.
HRC is also one of two of pro-Israel organizations that pays student journalists to write and share “pro-Israel content” through its jointly run “Canadian Campus Media Program.”
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) documents show that HRC — which is registered as a federal charity whose donors are eligible for tax credits — increased its annual charitable revenue from $186,843 in 2020 to $2,079,142 in 2023.
The majority of HRC’s charitable revenue has come from individual donations, the details of which are not disclosed by the CRA. However, HRC also receives funding from other charities — information that is disclosed — and some of those charities have included billionaire and millionaire family foundations.
The human rights organization Just Peace Advocates (JPA), together with Writers Against the War On Gaza Toronto, recently submitted a formal complaint about HRC to the CRA, requesting an audit of the organization and alleging that its activities “could be violating Canadian law.”
Given HRC’s registration as a federal charity that provides tax receipts — and the organization’s glossary of recommended terms that JPA argues contradicts Canada’s own foreign policy — JPA stated: “The use of public funds to promote an agenda that is counter to Canadian foreign policy as well as domestic and international law should not be acceptable.”
JPA also stated that it has a tip line for “media workers who have been victims of harassment from HonestReporting Canada or similar media lobbies.”
The Maple reached out to HRC via email and the organization’s online contact form, but did not receive any response to a list of questions about its activities and criticisms of its methods.
‘Better Late Than Never’
CPFP’s call out to journalists who have received threats after being targeted by HRC is part of a larger project that tracks press freedom violations across 12 categories, which include online threats, chilling statements and denials of access.
Individual incidents of online threats are not revealed publicly in order to protect those who report them, but those incidents are included in aggregated data, which are published annually.
Sonya Fatah, an associate professor at Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Journalism and a CPFP co-lead, told The Maple that the specific call out to journalists who have been targeted by HRC was done to create awareness about both the availability of the reporting tool and HRC’s methods.
“It’s more a question of making sure that people are aware and that they understand that threats they receive at the moment are a result of what appears to be coordinated harassment by HonestReporting Canada,” said Fatah.
Incidents related to or following campaigns by HRC may have already been reported using CPFP’s tool prior to the call out, she noted, adding that what CPFP’s annual reports capture are likely just a small snapshot of the wider harassment that media workers regularly deal with from a variety of sources.
Fatah said CPFP has noticed a particular escalation in HRC’s messaging and tactics over the past year.
“What we’re concerned about is when we think that a certain action or behaviour is actually affecting the capacity of news organizations, or newsrooms, or individuals to do their work, and it seems that it’s very clear that [HRC] is having an impact in a way that was not the case a few years ago,” she explained.
This is particularly concerning, Fatah said, given that many Canadian newsrooms are currently under significant financial strain and lack the time and resources to appropriately respond to campaigns launched by groups like HRC.
“I don’t call it ‘HonestReporting.’ I call it dishonest reporting. I think it’s very much a jingoistic organization that has a very clear agenda, which is to prevent any form of critique of the state of Israel and equating any criticism of it with antisemitism,” said Fatah.
She hopes to see more journalistic organizations following suit in calling out what she regards as HRC’s harm to newsrooms and journalism in Canada.
“You see that some organizations are creating some kind of space for dialogue, but they’re not taking a strong stance or response,” said Fatah. “I hope that changes.”
Jason Toney, director of media advocacy at Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), told The Maple that he was pleased to see J-Source’s call out, and is disappointed that other organizations that are supposed to protect journalists have largely remained silent on HRC’s activities.
“The time is well past due, but it’s better late than never,” said Toney. “The vast majority of the work that [HRC is] doing is not based on any kind of ethics or standards; it’s based on harassing people who say things that they don’t like or report on things that they don’t want them to report on.”
Toney said he suspects that some organizations have chosen to avoid publicly challenging pro-Israel groups like HRC for fear of being labelled “antisemitic.” Under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) problematic definition of antisemitism, he explained, it is easy to smear critics of the pro-Israel lobby as antisemites.
Additionally, said Toney, the National NewsMedia Council (NNC), Canada’s largest media accountability organization, includes newspapers owned by Postmedia as a significant portion of its members.
As previously reported by The Maple, Postmedia maintains a radically pro-Israel editorial stance, and has syndicated pro-Israel propaganda presented as wire stories across its newspapers.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), which is currently led by NNC’s managing director, has done “next to nothing” in response to HRC’s activities, Toney said.
Nonetheless, HRC recently launched a campaign targeting CAJ’s vice-president, Fatima Syed, after Syed wrote an op-ed in the Toronto Star that described the “death and destruction” caused by Israel’s brutal war on Gaza.
In an emailed statement to The Maple, CAJ president Brent Jolly, who said he is also a board member of CPFP, acknowledged that the CAJ has not made an official statement on HRC’s activities.
He noted, however, that he was quoted in the story published by La Converse this week, stating: “I’m not necessarily very worried about what Honest Reporting puts on its website, I’m more worried about the people and what they do after the fact. This is not democracy, this is dictatorship.”
In his email to The Maple, Jolly said that in other interviews, “I’ve described HRC’s tactics of bullying and intimidating journalists as disgusting and, in many cases, defamatory. HRC has, furthermore, increasingly perfected its methods of employing disinformation to weaponize free speech in an effort to silence legitimate forms of expression.”
He added that he is disappointed that some critics believe CAJ has not done enough to counter HRC’s methods, but disagrees with any assertion that his organization has done next to nothing. He explained that public statements and tweets “compose only a very small part of the CAJ’s ongoing advocacy work.”
“We have not yet used this tool as it relates to HRC’s activities because, in my view, they are not operating on the same wavelength as other public agencies that purport to serve Canadians we have called out publicly before,” said Jolly.
“Responding publicly to accusations levied by groups, like HRC, only gives them the attention they so desperately desire to legitimate claims that, frankly, stretch the limits of even the most far-fetched levels of credulity.”
“I understand individuals may disagree with this approach,” Jolly added. He said CAJ has focused on “proactive measures,” such as providing journalists targeted by vitriol with access to an emergency support fund, and encouraging news organizations to make use of CPFP’s reporting tool.
Toney said he hopes that J-Source’s call out and JPA’s complaint to the CRA could begin to prompt more widespread calls for accountability.
“The wheels of justice on this stuff move very slowly, but I do hold out some hope that these efforts could be meaningful, and at the very least, it’s raising awareness,” he explained.
“I hope that when journalists receive these messages, they really shouldn’t take them seriously. I don’t think that HonestReporting Canada does serious work.”
Alex Cosh is the news editor of The Maple.
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