MONTREAL — Frustrated students at McGill University founded a new online student news source this month to counter what they call “left-leaning” and “anti-Israel” tendencies in other campus media.
Brendan Steven [David Huehn photo]
The new centre-right outlet, called the Prince Arthur Herald – which bills itself as “Canada’s premier student news source” – will offer alternative coverage of Israel and other news from a conservative editorial perspective.
“Unfortunately, McGill suffers from the same grave misunderstandings of Israel that many Canadian campuses do,” co-editor Brendan Steven said.
Although the Prince Arthur Herald will feature student life, culture, and Canadian politics, part of its mandate is to cover Israeli and international politics.
“The evidence was all around us that our ideas and our values had no forum to be heard,” co-founder Kevin Pidgeon wrote in his first editorial.
“Council has, semester after semester, been a repository of centre-left moderates to the most radical and far left ideologies university can offer.”
Prior to the Herald’s establishment, students could choose to read either the McGill Daily or the weekly McGill Tribune.
Steven described the McGill Daily as a left-wing newspaper with an anti-Israel editorial stance.
Pidgeon wrote in the Herald that “the McGill Daily continues to happily opine against not simply the right wing, but against capitalism, democratic institutions, the Israeli state, and anything remotely related to the right wing.”
The Tribune, according to Steven, is a moderate centre-left paper that generally avoids Middle Eastern politics in order to steer clear of controversy. But both papers have published articles that describe Israel as an “apartheid state”and have accused Israel of ethnic cleansing.
“The anti-Israel movement on campus is extremely strong and well organized,” Steven said.
“An [Israel Defence Forces] soldier once came for a simple lunch to meet with Jewish students, and a group of activists protested outside complaining that he was recruiting for the Israeli army.”
In the last few years, events such as Israeli Apartheid Week have grown in popularity on campus, and a McGill radio program reportedly blamed Israel for the 2004 atrocities at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
In contrast, the Herald recently published an opinion piece called “The Left vs. Israel” which accused the political left of baselessly denigrating the Jewish state.
“We are fortunate at McGill to have a very strong Jewish community that is vigorous and passionate in its defense of Israel,” said Steven, who runs the Herald with Pidgeon.
According to its homepage, the Herald will provide a home for moderate students to offer hard-hitting analysis and real debate.
The Herald can be found at princearthurherald.com.
