When Recanting Racist Venom Preserves Prestigious Positions

"I acknowledge that some of the content I reshared on social media adds to the pain of Jewish communities and I apologize for that unreservedly."

"I am unequivocally opposed to antisemitism and all violence against Jewish people. Immediately upon learning about these concerns, I reached out to leaders in the Jewish community to listen and will continue to do so."

"I have devoted my career to anti-racism work, and I will continue to speak out against racism, discrimination and violence in all its forms."

Sadia Zaman, director, Canadian Journalism Collective board

"The Jewish community in Canada is deeply concerned about the objectivity and balanced perspectives of some members of the newly formed Canadian Journalism Collective Steering Committee."

"[It is concerning that a lack of balance was evidenced in Zaman's behaviour which could have the potential effect of a noted imbalance in the distribution of Google news-sharing funds among Canadian news outlets by the Collective]."

Shimon Koffler Fogel, CEO, Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs

Sadia Zaman's account on the social media site X was set recently to private. Before that happened she retweeted, or as she put it 'reshared' a number of posts relating to the Israel-Gaza war that qualified at the very least as misinformation, that was highlighted by Honest Canada Reporting. As someone in a position of news-coverage authority, along with her protestations of standing tall against racism, discrimination and violence, the posts she felt sufficiently aligned with to retweet on the X platform speak volumes about the level of hypocrisy she practices.

 

• @Timesofgaza: 'Don't let anyone tell you it started on October 7th 2023' -- a rationale of the terrorist attacks by Hamas on that fateful day;
• @Jonathon_K_Cook: critical of media reportage of October 7 rapes, disparaging testimonials; news coverage "recycles a supposed eyewitness account";
• @kennardmatt: comparing Israel to Nazi Germany; that more children were dying in Gaza than at Auschwitz;
• Al-Jazeera: IDF soldiers raped women during a raid on Al-Shifa Hospital;
• @muammadshehad2: reasserting claims of IDF soldiers raping Palestinian women in Gaza.

Just incidentally former Al-Jazeera director Yasser Abu Hilalah posed to X that Hamas had confirmed this rape allegation against the Israel Defense Forces as having been false. A backtrack there is no record of Sadia Zaman 'resharing'. How was she to know, after all, that these allegations represented viral antisemitism, a charge she had no idea whatever of, which only reached her consciousness when she 'learned about these concerns' over her rather inappropriate resharings for one who deplored racist antisemitism.

The Inspirit Foundation, is a Canadian non-profit organization whose focus is the promotion of inclusion and pluralism through media and arts. Her previous experience was as managing director of Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum, and as a director at CBC News as well as executive director of Women in Film and Television-Toronto. How could anyone doubt this woman's goodwill and sincerity?

A tweet by Breach Media disparaging the CBCs coverage of the Israel-Gaza war was also reshared by Ms. Zaman. The story was a CBC producer's account of the CBC organization that "whitewashed" Israel's 'horrors in Gaza' which was also considered by Ms. Zaman fair game for resharing. This woman and her organization are set to decide how the Google $100 million funding is to be distributed among Canadian news outlets.

"The social media content reshared by CEO Sadia Zaman is inappropriate. For that, we unreservedly apologize to the Jewish community and others who were hurt by these actions."

"Ms. Zaman has also expressed regret and apologized."

"Inspirit is unequivocally opposed to antisemitism and all violence against Jewish people."

"Ms. Zaman is in the process of contacting members of the Jewish community directly to express her regret for these social media posts."

James Chan and Deborah Irving, co-chairs, Inspirit Foundation