Ben Mulroney’s Xenophobic Tweets and 3 Other Recent Journalism Fails
By Stacy Lee Kong
Image: CTV
Content warning: this newsletter contains references to, and descriptions and depictions of, Islamophobia, as well as context links that contain graphic descriptions and depictions of war, violence and death.
As always, a note on language: As I have explained in previous newsletters, it’s super important that we take care with our language when discussing Israel and Palestine, because the way we talk about this situation has real consequences for real people. (This week, there were two scary antisemitic incidents in Montreal, and many examples of blatant Islamophobia from media, public figures and politicians, which we’ll get into in the rest of the newsletter.) So to be clear, when I critique the Israeli government and military, I am not critiquing all Israelis, much less all Jewish people. I also think it’s important to push back on attempts to cast critique of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) as antisemitic; it’s dangerous to conflate Zionism with Judaism, as this list of prominent Jewish writers recently argued. That’s why it’s not antisemitic to call for a ceasefire—as António Guterres, secretary-general of the United Nations, the United Nations General Assembly, 630 NGOs around the world (including Amnesty International, the Malala Fund, Medecins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, Plan International, Save the Children and War Child), and the Pope are all doing. Lastly, when I use the words colonization, genocide, apartheid, occupation and ethnic cleansing to describe Israel’s actions, that’s based on the analysis of organizations like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, the International Federation for Human Rights, the United Nations, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Jewish Voice for Peace, as well as academics who study genocide.
I keep thinking about other newsletters that I could write. I have a note in my phone of ideas, including a deep dive into Taylor Swift’s 2023 marketing strategy and a thinkpiece on the way doxxing has become not just acceptable, but actually desirable in some online spaces, and whether we should take that as a sign that we’re just, like, fundamentally incapable of transcending the carceral framework of our society. But every Thursday, I realize I can’t write them. Those topics just don’t feel as necessary or as important as what’s happening to Palestinians right now, and especially how my colleagues in Canada and around the world are covering the ever-worsening situation in Gaza. I can’t look away from this news, which means I can’t help but notice all of the ways journalists are failing at their professional duties. Especially this week! It felt like every day revealed a new failure, some I posted about on Instagram, some I just added to the list that became this newsletter.
So, that’s what I’m going to do in the rest of this piece: detail four of the things I saw, what's wrong with each of them and why we should care. Because while it’s important to hold elected officials and other institutions accountable, and it can be illuminating to understand celebrities’ decisions around how (or if) they speak out, I’d argue that focusing on media is even more important, because so many people are relying on the news to shape their understanding of this situation—and journalists are often failing to meet the moment.
1. Ben Mulroney and Warren Kinsella’s tweets conflating all Palestinians with Hamas
Let’s start with good old Ben Mulroney. We mostly know him as the one-time co-host of Your Morning and anchor on eTalk, both CTV shows, but Mulroney is also the son of former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, who, it’s relevant to know, strongly opposed apartheid in South Africa and played a leading role in not only convincing Commonwealth countries to implement sanctions against the state, but also in securing Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. I say that’s relevant because ironically, the younger Mulroney recently took to X/Twitter to support calls for the arrest and deportation of anyone who attends a protest in favour of Palestinian liberation.
The tweet that kicked this all off has since been deleted—and for good reason, since freedom of thought, belief and expression, freedom of association and freedom of peaceful assembly are all enshrined in Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms—but screenshots are forever, so: over the weekend, author, commentator and, oh yes, lawyer Warren Kinsella posted a link to a Toronto Sun op-ed with the caption, “Again: if they are here on a visa, or do not have citizenship, deport them. If they have citizenship, charge them.” He was referring to protesters who have been showing up in Canadian cities large and small, calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to push for a ceasefire in Gaza. The ability to do so is, of course, a fundamental characteristic of a democratic society, so Kinsella’s proposal to arrest and/or deport people based on their political beliefs is pretty horrifying, which is probably why he deleted it so quickly. But not before Mulroney agreed with him, retweeting the post with the caption, “I co-sign this.” Worse, even after Kinsella deleted, Mulroney continued to double down on his xenophobic rhetoric, saying, “I support the idea that if you publicly endorse a terrorist organization, you should be prosecuted. And if you do so and you are not a Canadian citizen, you should be deported. I can do this all day. #HamasisISIS.” (Mulroney has since posted a seemingly PR-crafted statement that walks back this sentiment, but all of his tweets are all still up. And this specific post was flagged as violating X’s rules against hateful conduct.)
There’s a lot going on here; first, the deliberate attempt to characterize all Palestinians and their allies as Hamas is part of an ongoing attempt to dehumanize civilians, therefore manufacturing the public’s consent for their genocide. But I also want to unpack the subtext of these tweets, which is that immigrants’ acceptance in this country is conditional and can—or perhaps, should—be revoked if they disagree with the state.
This is not the first time that Canadian conservatives have used citizenship as a cudgel in an attempt to control racialized people’s behaviour. In 2015, the then-Conservative government passed Bill C-24, which gave it the power to revoke the citizenship of dual citizens who had been convicted of committing “acts against Canada,” such as terrorism, espionage or treason. At the time, then-Immigration Minister Chris Alexander argued the bill was necessary to fight “the ever-evolving threat of Jihadi terrorism.” However, the Broadbent Institute argued that Bill C-24 would actually just produce a class of second-class citizens. Their post on the matter quoted University of Toronto law professor Audrey Macklin, who wrote, “from antiquity to the late 20th century, denationalisation was a tool used by states to rid themselves of political dissidents, convicted criminals and ethnic, religious or racial minorities. The latest target of denationalisation is the convicted terrorist, or the suspected terrorist, or the potential terrorist, or maybe the associate of a terrorist. He is virtually always Muslim and male.”
Macklin was referencing the West’s consistent weaponization of the term ‘terrorist’ to justify xenophobia, a playbook that Kinsella and Mulroney were also closely following this week. What I want to point out is that I don’t remember either of these privileged members of Canada’s media class having similar smoke for the 2022 trucker convoy, which made the cross-country journey from B.C. to Ottawa, ostensibly to protest vaccine mandates, but actually to express their displeasure over Canada’s perceived liberalism and normalize white supremacist rhetoric. To me, this is a clear sign of who Kinsella and Mulroney perceive as ‘truly’ Canadian; who is permanent, even if their opinions are potentially distasteful, and who is disposable, depending on their loyalty.
It’s also worth noting that both men know very well that Canada does not deport people for protesting; the point wasn’t the legality of the suggestion. It was to sow fear, chill dissent and emphasize their social dominance.
(Also, yes, Mulroney is Jessica Mulroney’s husband, which we’ve talked about before.)
2. The Washington Post’s racist editorial cartoon
This week, the Washington Post published a racist editorial cartoon by cartoonist Michael Ramirez that portrayed a Muslim man—you can tell because he has stereotypically Arab features and is labelled ‘Hamas’—with babies and children tied to his body, visually signalling that they are human shields, while a woman wearing a hijab is strapped to his back, playing on stereotypes of Muslim women as docile, oppressed and lacking in agency. In case it wasn’t totally clear what Ramirez’s intention was, the man is saying, “How dare Israel attack civilians.”
The cartoon has since been deleted; according to the Post’s opinion editor, David Shipley, “[he] saw the drawing as a caricature of a specific individual, the Hamas spokesperson who celebrated the attacks on unarmed civilians in Israel,” (even though a specific person isn’t named, and the representation of this Hamas leader is accompanied by a Palestinian flag… 🤔) but “the reaction to the image convinced [him] that [he] had missed something profound, and divisive.”
That’s… actually a super embarrassing thing to admit. In addition to the conversation we can have about how dehumanizing imagery and language is again being used to justify violence against Palestinians, and the irony of doing so considering the Nazis’ well-documented use of similar tactics to dehumanize Jewish people in the lead-up to the Holocaust, this shit is not subtle. Look to history; we have seemingly endless examples of media outlets specifically using propagandist editorial cartoons to justify, and even encourage, state violence against oppressed groups. I mean: Jewish people. Japanese people. Tutsis in Rwanda. The Rohingya. Enslaved Black people in the U.S. and the U.K. Chinese people in Canada.
So, what does Shipley mean he missed something profound and divisive? It wasn’t subtext—it was all laid out pretty clearly. Which means we’re not talking about an oversight; we’re talking about journalistic malpractice. (Also, this isn’t the first time Ramirez has been racist toward Muslims, or other marginalized groups for that matter, so missing his intention is a double fail.)
3. Anderson Cooper’s interview with MSF nurse Emily Callahan
This week, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Emily Callahan, a nurse activity manager for Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) who had been working in Gaza since August and was evacuated to the U.S. last week. A few things about this interview stuck out for me: first, what Callahan saw was horrific. She talked about being unable to treat children who had massive burns, open wounds and partial amputations because the hospitals in Gaza are overwhelmed and under-supplied. She talked about discharging these children to refugee camps where there’s no running water at all, four toilets for 50,000 people and only two hours of access to any water at all per day. The implication is clear: if their injuries didn’t kill them, infection might, because it is impossible to keep wounds clean in those conditions.
I was also struck by her consistent reiteration that MSF’s Palestinian employees saved her life. These men worked every connection they had to procure food and water so she and her Western colleagues didn’t literally die of starvation or dehydration, they defended them from crowds of people who feared they were Israeli spies, they argued with officials to get them out of Gaza—and they did so while their own families and friends were being killed in airstrikes. This was clearly an attempt to undermine the popular stereotype of Muslim men as monsters and savages, a perception that subconsciously encourages people to restrict our sympathy to women and children, or general groups of civilians. It also felt like a reminder that while we see women’s and children’s deaths as powerful rhetorical tools, Palestinian men also deserve to be protected and mourned.
And perhaps most relevant to this conversation, Cooper’s interviewing style was also notable. He didn’t ask her to first condemn Hamas before he would listen to her experiences, as most racialized people have been required to do. He didn’t question her stories or condescend to her. He was gentle, and considerate of her feelings. It’s a stark contrast to the way comedian and TikToker Goub was treated by GB News anchor Esther McVey this week, and how we’ve seen Palestinians and their allies treated more generally. But I don’t think this is actually a win, though I acknowledge that it’s definitely a better example of how we should be interviewing people about Palestine. That’s because Anderson’s approach still highlights deeper issues around who is seen as credible, and worthy of compassion. It’s not a coincidence that Callahan—a conventionally attractive white woman who likely received media training that helped her stay very calm while recounting her experiences—was treated with respect when so many racialized, and especially Muslim, people are not.
What’s more, Cooper also pursued a line of questioning that I found really odd: at two different points, he asked Callahan if MSF’s national staff was protecting her from Palestinians, as if they were the most profound risk to her life. Despite what seem to be restrictions around how, or even if, she could mention Israel, she did a great job of redirecting, and especially of emphasizing that Palestinian civilians are desperate people trying to navigate horrific circumstances, but his blatant attempts to demonize people who are being bombed, starved and denied clean water and access to medical care should be interpreted as a sign of who he, and the network at large, sees as human.
4. The collective silence over Israel’s targeting of Gazan journalists
Maybe the most profound disappointment for me, though, has been the relative silence from Western media about the Palestinian journalists who have been killed since the beginning of October. Over the weekend, Journalists for Human Rights held a Gala in Toronto, and while I wasn’t there, it seems like there weren’t many mentions of journalists in Gaza, who are dying at an astounding rate, even for a war zone: between 34 and 50 members of the press have been killed since Oct. 7, depending on different estimates.
But it’s not just JHR; a clip of Salman Bashir, a correspondent for Palestine TV, recently went viral. Bashir was on-air when he learned that an airstrike had killed his colleague, Mohammed Abu Hatab, as well as Abu Hatab’s wife, two of his sons and four of his daughters. Bashir was overcome with emotion and tore off his blue press vest, sobbing. Later, he said, “I felt that the armor I was wearing, which clearly bore the press badge, was not protecting me.”
Palestinian authorities say the airstrike that killed Abu Hatab and so many members of his family came from Israel; the Israeli government denies it, saying in a statement, “the IDF does not purposefully target journalists, and takes measures to mitigate unintended harm to journalists and all civilians.” Of course, earlier this year, the Committee to Protect Journalists published a report that found at least 20 journalists had been killed by Israeli military fire since 2001, 18 of them Palestinian, and the IDF had never taken accountability. What’s more, when Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh was shot and killed by an IDF soldier in 2022 while covering an Israeli military operation in the occupied West Bank, the military initially denied responsibility, attempting to blame Palestinian fighters before eventually admitting there was a “possibility” that she had been “accidentally” shot. This happened months after a CNN investigation found “evidence—including two videos of the scene of the shooting—that there was no active combat, nor any Palestinian militants, near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death” as well as evidence suggesting “that Israeli forces took aim at the journalist.” The IDF eventually apologized for Abu Akleh’s death in May of this year. Which is to say, we should take the military’s assertion that they aren’t targeting journalists with a grain of salt, because that is not what recent history has shown us.
And that should be enough for Western media to decry. (Especially Reuters, which even used the passive voice to report that one of its own journalists, Issam Abdallah, had been killed by an Israeli missile.) But these journalists’ deaths are troubling on another level, too—foreign media is not being allowed to enter Gaza. The Israeli government has a history of bombing newsrooms in the territory, and in October told Reuters and Agence France Presses that it cannot guarantee journalists’ safety if they remain there. Israel controls telecommunications in Gaza and regularly disrupts service. So, these local, very young, journalists are literally the only way the world can learn what’s going on, and it seems very likely that they are being targeted for doing so. On Oct. 31, the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate asked Western media to “take action to stop the horrifying bombardment of our people in Gaza.” This is slowly changing, but until this week, very few have.
The more things change, the more they stay the same
And you know what this all reminds me of, in a super weird way? The “Appropriation Prize” debacle from 2017. In that case, some of the most powerful people in Canadian media mocked the very concept of cultural appropriation, signalling to those of us who worked with them, liked them and, in some cases, looked up to them, that they didn’t believe the very real oppression that shapes our lives actually existed, or if it did, it couldn’t be that bad. We’ve supposedly had a ‘racial reckoning’ since then, but let’s be real—the same type of people still hold the most power in Canadian (and U.S.) newsrooms. Their biases still shape the coverage they approve, the approaches they allow, the words they use, the things they think are offensive, and perhaps most importantly, who they see as human beings deserving of respect.
And make no mistake—that shapes how this story is being told. Over the past month, I’ve seen so many commentators, reporters and members of the media jump through grammatical hoops to linguistically distance the Israeli government and military from their actions. CNN just admitted that its journalists aren’t just embedded with the IDF, the Israeli military is also approving stories prior to publication. (For the record, I cannot think of a single editor I have ever worked with in 15+ years who would agree to that condition—and I have almost exclusively worked at women’s lifestyle magazines, not even hard news outlets.) Canadian journalists have rightfully criticized the trauma and violence inflicted on Israeli civilians by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, but are seemingly incapable of applying even a fraction of the same empathy toward Palestinians, who are being incessantly bombed, who have no food, who are resorting to drinking dirty water, who are dying by the thousands—or who survive, only to see their neighbourhoods turned to rubble, their loved ones’ bodies shattered and their children traumatized.
That is a failure. It is our job as journalists to tell the truth, even when it’s unpopular. Even when it might make people uncomfortable. Even when it’s scary to do so. It’s not to score political points, or to pat ourselves on the back for our ‘objectivity.’ And it’s definitely not to obfuscate the truth in service of the West’s capitalist priorities—or its naked imperialism.
I also want to remind media, especially my Canadian colleagues, that if we want audiences to trust us, we have to be trustworthy. Pretending that we don’t see what’s going on, or that we can afford to sit this one out, is not going to serve us well in future arguments about why our profession is important or necessary or deserving of funding, whether that’s subscriptions or government grants. If audiences cannot depend on us to accurately report what is being done to Palestinians and who is doing it, especially when they are seeing ample evidence from other sources, then why would they depend on us for anything?
And Did You Hear About…
All of the tributes to Jezebel, the feminist media outlet that was foundational to my understanding of feminism—and what a women’s magazine could be. (G/O Media just unceremoniously shuttered the site.)
The Cut’s longread on Erewhon, which the site describes as “the most culty grocer in L.A.” Also, Mold magazine’s feature on the company, which came out in April.
The first images from the European Space Agency’s Euclid telescope.
Gidam, a 2021 short film about a young woman fighting for democracy in Sudan. Clips have been making the rounds on my social media feeds this week (the world’s attention on Palestine has created opportunities for other humanitarian crises to enter the Western public consciousness, as bizarre as that is to say), but it’s worth watching the whole thing.
This super smart analysis of Taylor Swift’s Taylor’s Versions albums, which situates her in the context of Prince’s similar (but not similarly successful) efforts in the ‘90s.
Thank you for reading this week’s newsletter! Still looking for intersectional pop culture analysis? Here are a few ways to get more Friday:
💫 Join Club Friday, our membership program. Members get early access to Q&As with pop culture experts, Friday merch and deals and discounts from like-minded brands.
💫 Follow Friday on social media. We’re on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and even (occasionally) TikTok.
💫 If you’d like to make a one-time donation toward the cost of creating Friday Things, you can donate through Ko-Fi.