In recent weeks, multiple organizations have spoken out against the CBC’s decision to issue an on-air apology after Duncan McCue referenced Palestine during an interview with cartoonist, journalist and war correspondent Joe Sacco on “the themes of colonialism and resource extraction.” The response from CBC management, however, has not been convincing.

Freedom of the press now rests with the honourable few: the dissidents on the internet who belong to no club, who are neither rich nor laden with Pulitzers, but produce fine, disobedient, moral journalism—those like Julian Assange. Meanwhile, it is our responsibility to stand by a true journalist whose sheer courage ought to be inspiration to all of us who still believe that freedom is possible.

“I referred to the Palestinian territories as ‘Palestine,’ we apologize.” This surreal on-air apology was broadcast last week on the CBC’s The Current, after guest host Duncan McCue referenced Palestine during an interview with cartoonist, journalist and war correspondent Joe Sacco on “the themes of colonialism and resource extraction.”

Attention, as a dialectic of focus and distraction, has become central to understanding mediated life in the information economy. If we are our experiences, and there are more possibilities to experience than ever before, then the highly selective allocation, surrender, and capture of attention determines what we become—and all that we can become⁠—as individuals and as a society.

In 2020, an onslaught of global crises have come hurling towards us all at once. The mainstream media can no longer ignore the fact that these issues are interconnected, and must report on them as such. Until they do, the momentum for justice will continue to reverberate, and fundamental problems will remain unsolved.

It is obvious that right across the board, in each tiered sector of institutional representation, the corporate media is facilitating violence, exploitation, and abuse of the weak for the gain of the powerful. In our compromised, corrupt democracies there is little chance of accessing justice for this abuse of the fourth estate.

In the aftermath of Soleimani’s assassination, Krugman rushed to assure his readers that Trump’s bullying violence represented a fundamental break with American history. While America once had “a special leadership position, one that sometimes involved playing a role in reshaping other countries’ political systems,” he argued, Trump “has never shown any sign of understanding why America used to be special.”

Last month, two conferences were scheduled in Montreal as part of Vanessa Beeley’s Canadian tour. As soon as they were announced, the speaker was subjected to volleys of invective, insults and slander from the proponents of the official narrative on Syria. The strategy was clear: smear the person to distract attention from what she was saying, attack the messenger so that the message would not be heard.

Frankly, I can hardly believe what has happened. To me it is outrageous that a person of Beeley’s credibility as an investigative journalist and the author of a wide range of superbly documented articles and books should be barred from presenting a talk on a critically important subject at a Canadian university or a public library. What has happened to our supposed “freedom of speech”?

Slavery and the other colonial Holocausts that—like the state of Israel—are a manifestation of white settler domination, are systematically excluded from Holocaust Memorial Day. The same media that claims to care about anti-Semitism covers up this racist double standard rather than treat it as a scandal.