Emmy Rubin, a Jewish student at McGill University, long dreamed of becoming a television comedy writer.
But recent events turned her focus toward journalism instead.
“After Oct. 7, comedy TV shows didn’t really matter at the moment. What was more important was being a journalist and telling the stories that were really happening,” Rubin told The Canadian Jewish News.
Last year, during her first semester at McGill, anti-Israel protests started to spread throughout the Montreal campus. In response, Rubin hoped to write about her stance in The Tribune, an independent publication run by students.
While talking to other Jewish enrolees at McGill, however, she learned that publishing her perspective in its pages would prove difficult.
“Every time one of the Jewish students had tried to get something in (The Tribune) it would be immediately rejected, without any sort of appeal,” Rubin said.
This trend of rejection, she says, applied to other McGill publications too.
“No matter how many times (Jewish and pro-Israel students) adhered to The Tribune’s or the McGill Daily’s guidelines, (written content) by them just wouldn’t go through,” she said.
While the student-funded McGill Daily and The Tribune have both published a handful of stories by anti-Zionist Jewish students, including pieces written by members of McGill’s chapter of Independent Jewish Voices, few articles—if any—have been written by pro-Israel students throughout the last year, Rubin says.
The Canadian Jewish News emailed The Tribune and the McGill Daily for comments, but did not receive a reply.
Last year, The Tribune highlighted Jewish students coming together amid growing antisemitism, but their reporting has repeatedly labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide,” a characterization which has been rejected by Canada.
On Nov. 18, 2023, The McGill Daily’s editorial board published an endorsement for a referendum called “Policy Against Genocide in Palestine,” describing Israel’s military actions in Gaza as a “genocidal bombing campaign,” and calling for the university to “cut ties with all institutions, corporations, and donors complicit in genocide, settler-colonialism, apartheid, or ethnic cleansing against Palestinians.”
Student newspapers at McGill, however, are not unique in their anti-Israel stances.
The Canadian Jewish News interviewed numerous contributors to campus newspapers and evaluated multiple news articles published since Oct. 7, 2023, in order to better understand the media landscape at post-secondary institutions.
Students claim that university publications are disproportionately prioritizing anti-Israel and pro-Palestine coverage, while publishing stories that distort context and misinform readers about the Middle Eastern conflict.
Jay Solomon, the chief advancement officer for Hillel Ontario—who has reviewed multiple grievances from students at numerous schools in the province—says that, “On the whole, student newspapers have not been good at portraying a balanced perspective of Israel, or the challenges facing Jewish Canadians.”
Solomon pointed to student paper coverage that has sanitized the actions of Hamas on Oct. 7, called terrorist attacks “justified resistance,” and even denied reports of sexual violence against Israeli victims.
Some editors-in-chief at student papers have admitted to only featuring pro-Palestine perspectives, supporting Solomon’s assessment of a media bias at Canadian schools.
In the face of biased reporting, Jewish students throughout the country have begun to challenge the prevailing narrative.
Highlighting Jewish voices
Now in her second year at McGill University, Rubin is the co-founder of The White and Blue, a student publication she co-founded to amplify Jewish voices that are pro-Israel.
The publication she started with managing editor Liraz Ohayon was geared towards McGill students, but word started to spread about media censorship at multiple schools in Montreal and beyond.
Initially launched in January 2024, with a print distribution of 1,000 copies (500 in English and 500 in French), The White and Blue is now open for submissions to students at all post-secondary institutions in Montreal.
The digital and printed publication has a section dedicated to general news, opinion pieces, and “censorship,” where Jewish students can publish stories that were initially rejected by campus newspaper editors. It also has a section for creative writing, and a section where students can share insights gained from Torah readings and experiences tied to religious practice.
Recent articles feature headlines such as, “Are Israeli Jews really colonizers?” and “A Traveler’s Guide to Israel.” The publication has an Israel correspondent (after a member of the editorial board recently moved to Israel) and a fact-check section for students to debunk claims published in other student papers.
“Mostly, we wanted to create a community that allows Jews to feel safe expressing what they think and feel,” Rubin said.
Framing and ‘one-sided’ perspective
Rubin and her team are up against other student publications that admit to favouring one side of the conflict.
Brontë Behling, the editor-in-chief of The Cord, Wilfrid Laurier University’s newspaper for the campus in Waterloo, Ont., admits that her team’s coverage has mostly featured pro-Palestine perspectives since Oct. 7, 2023.
“I would say it probably still is a little bit more on one side,” The Cord’s editor-in-chief told The Canadian Jewish News. “I think that’s because the voices for students who are supporting Palestine are so loud and they’re doing so much work that, I think, it can often be hard to get a completely neutral angle,” she said.
“I think you’ll see it in a lot of university newspapers,” she added. “We’re covering one perspective of it just because it is a little bit harder to define those who are willing to speak on the other side.”
When asked whether the rise of antisemitism could play a role in Jewish and pro-Israel students deciding not to voice their opinions in print, Behling said, “Yeah, I think that’s definitely something that can be happening.”
A recent article published by The Cord, which described the escalation of violence on Oct. 7, 2023, left out critical details about Hamas’s attacks, saying all murders were a result of rocket fire, omitting the carnage of Hamas militants entering the homes of civilians and committing massacre at a music festival.
“Ongoing war in Gaza encourages rally ceasefire aims” has now been updated with a correction and a note on The Cord’s website.
Behling conceded that it would be “fair criticism” to say that the original article did not provide an accurate account of the day’s events.
“With an issue like this, I think no matter how you frame things, people will find an issue,” Behling said.
In an email statement sent to The Canadian Jewish News, the Laurier communications department emphasized that student media organizations operate as separate entities from the university, and that the school attempts to facilitate fair and inclusive dialogue.
“There are many student-run organizations at Laurier, including student publications, which are student-led and operated as separate entities from the university administration,” the university wrote, adding that The Cord has an operating agreement that acknowledges the right of their umbrella organization, Wilfrid Laurier University Student Publications (WLUSP), to control their content “without interference.”
Kurtis Rideout, the executive director of WLUSP, wrote in an email statement sent to The Canadian Jewish News that the organization is committed to journalistic integrity.
He added that, “Balanced sourcing is emphasized in all our training procedures. All Laurier students are encouraged to contribute to our publications and our content as such aims to reflect the values of the student body. We also uphold the value of editorial independence for all our publications.”
Rabbi Moishe Goldman, a chaplain at Wilfrid Laurier University and the director of Chabad Waterloo, says he has not been approached by any contributors of The Cord since Oct. 7, 2023.
“The truth is never going to be found on one side of an issue,” he told The Canadian Jewish News. “Your job as a journalist is to uncover the truth and present the truth. Your job is not to present a biased side.”
The Canadian University Press (CUP) is a national organization that connects student newspapers across Canada, offering resources, training, and a newswire service. CUP advocates for press freedom and ethical journalism, making it a key source for understanding trends in student coverage of complex issues.
CUP plays a crucial role in assessing bias or imbalance in student media, but the organization has not expressed standard practice for covering stories related to Israel and Palestine.
The Canadian Jewish News emailed CUP for comment on the current landscape of anti-Israel bias at student papers—but did not receive a reply.
Tuition fees and student media financing
Student newspapers in Ontario are typically funded through ‘ancillary fees’ included in tuition, which support a variety of student services. The provincial government introduced an opt-out policy in 2019 that allowed students to decline funding for non-essential services, including campus newspapers.
This policy was reversed after significant pushback from those who argued that it severely impacted the financial stability of campus media.
While independent student newspapers also exist in Canada, most campus newspapers at major Canadian universities are funded through those fees, giving them a more predictable revenue stream.
This revenue stream, however, is limited. At institutions like the University of Toronto, students pay around $10 to $15 per semester for student media fees, while at the University of British Columbia, the fee is approximately $3 to $5 per semester. While a tiny amount of money relative to tuition—often less than 1 per cent—these fees typically cover only a portion of the newspaper’s budget, and many publications also rely on revenue from advertising, donations, and crowdfunding.
The challenges posed by limited budgets often contribute to deeper struggles faced by student editorial boards. The Cord, for instance, offers small annual stipends to editors, but these payments don’t account for the hours of work students dedicate to the project while also juggling full-time schoolwork.
The distractions can pose problems when it comes to fact-checking, due to the time and resources required to verify complex or sensitive topics. As a result, contentious narratives—such as those surrounding Israel and Palestine—can sometimes miss the mark.
News vs. Opinion
One newspaper that benefits from mandatory student fees is The Gauntlet, which is based at the University of Calgary.
Matej Harsany, a UofC alumnus, encountered editorial barriers with this student newspaper when pitching a column reflecting on Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks last year.
After his pitch was denied due to existing coverage, he pivoted to a news article, which was heavily edited. He says editors omitted key details about the Nova music festival massacre and quotes about evacuation routes established in Gaza by the IDF. “Entire sections were cut out,” Harsany told The Canadian Jewish News. “It was a completely distorted version of what I had originally written.”
Instead of allowing the distorted version of his article to be published, Harsany opted to write a letter to the editor, a way to return to his initial inclination of expressing his opinion.
“At this point, there were things happening on campus with student groups like SPI (Students Supporting Israel) getting harassed while doing an Oct. 7 vigil,” he recalled, of early November. “There were hostage posters getting ripped down across Canadian universities.”
Harsany wrote the letter to the editor in collaboration with Hillel Calgary and StandWithUs Canada. It went through multiple rounds of edits.
The original draft of the letter featured different types of explicit antisemitism that has been occurring in Canada in the aftermath of Oct. 7. The letter was published by The Gauntlet on Nov. 10, 2023, headlined “There is no moral equivalence: Hamas must be condemned.”
“Those who dare to advocate for a more balanced perspective—those who highlight the plight of countless women and children victimized in Israel—are met with hostility and rebuke,” reads the piece.
A few weeks later, a different letter to the editor was published, written by the Muslim Student Association (MSA).
Harsany says it was immediately clear that this letter did not go through the same rigorous editing process. “It was very apparent that the authors were just given liberty to say a lot of different things without either any citations at all, very clearly biased citations, or a misrepresentation of the sources that they were using.”
The Canadian Jewish News emailed The Gauntlet for comment but did not receive a reply.
Front-page attention
Despite cases of editorial boards ignoring Jewish voices, there have been a few success stories of Jewish students banding together to share their perspective in campus publications.
Kayla Rzepa, a public relations major at Mount Royal University, in Calgary, was walking on campus one day, in November 2023, when she noticed the latest issue of The Reflector, the school’s independently published student paper.
“I came across it and the cover (featured) a picture of a sign being held up at a pro-Palestinian protest, saying, ‘End the genocide,’” Rzepa told The Canadian Jewish News.
She picked up the issue and read through the articles. One line, in particular, stood out. “It called the attacks of Oct. 7 a (justified) resistance movement,” she said.
Rzepa then arranged a meeting with The Reflector’s editor-in-chief and other representatives of the paper, inviting fellow Jewish students to attend. The meeting, she says, “got very emotional.”
Rzepa and the fellow Jewish students explained to the editor-in-chief that the one-sided coverage minimized the grief felt by the Jewish community. In response, the editor-in-chief agreed to let them write their own articles about the conflict.
Rzepa and two other Jewish students wrote three articles about Israel’s history and the ongoing war in the Middle East, highlighting pro-Israel perspectives. Aside from some minor edits, Rzepa says The Reflector’s editors allowed their submissions to remain intact.
For its edition dated Dec. 7, 2023, The Reflector featured a cover photo of flags with the headline “A complex history of Israel,” referring to the three stories written by Rzepa and her friends.
“I think once they were able to hear from us and just know we weren’t (coming from a place of) anger, they were willing to hear our perspective,” Rzepa reflects.
Extending coverage nationally
While a few Zionist students have succeeded in eventually getting their perspectives acknowledged in campus newspapers, Rubin still feels the need for more of their voices to be amplified through a central platform.
As the student publication approaches its one-year anniversary, Rubin says she plans on extending The White and Blue’s coverage throughout Canada, to counteract future sidelining of coverage that supports Israel.
“I’m so grateful that I get to lead (the team), but I don’t want it to come across like, like I’m the only person,” she said. “The White and Blue is made up of amazing individuals who are refusing to be silenced.”
Mitchell Consky was an editor for The Cord at Wilfrid Laurier University between 2014 and 2017.
