Some 200 members of the Jewish community, angered by a four-month anti-Israel campaign in the form of biased reporting in the city’s only English-language newspaper, the Montreal Gazette, invited Mark Harrison, the editor, to participate in a public discussion. The meeting, which took the form of a seminar, was held in the headquarters of the Allied Jewish Community Services.
Harrison conceded that “a few blunders” crept into the newspapers’ columns with regard to Israel’s incursion into Lebanon but insisted that “most of the reports came from reliable sources and whatever erroneous reporting was printed, has been subsequently corrected and amended.”
Aaron Pollack, a lawyer and president of the Jewish community’s task force, disproved Harrison’s contention by quoting excerpts from numerous articles published by the Gazette and from its editorials, demonstrating the bias of the newspaper. Harrison insisted that the Gazette did its duty but noted that “the audience was hostile to the Gazette.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
