Re: Israel debate rages on,
Oct. 10
As a U of T student who values fair and balanced reporting as well as tolerance for mankind, I was extremely disheartened to read this article. When enquiring about what happened outside of the conference when members of the Jewish Defence League showed up to protest, the reporter’s source was the conference organizers themselves; if this doesn’t scream bias, then I just don’t know what does.
Coalition against Israeli Apartheid members maintain that they were accosted by the JDL, which was unnecessary if it did happen. But the reporter failed to realize that this was not a one-sided fight: members of the JDL maintain that they had their material ripped out of their hands and were forced off the steps in front of the conference. The organizers of the conference used their legal right to free speech; the same rights should have been afforded to those in protest. If the reporter had wanted to write an editorial concerning the conference, it should not have been fronted as a news story.
-Tori Cheifetz
• Refreshing, encouraging, courageous, challenging, balanced-freedom of the press lives at The Varsity. I am a member of the public who attended the conference covered in the above article. The reporting in The Varsity was top-notch and exceeded anything we might find in the mainstream media.
There are a number of encouraging signs in this debate-we’re talking about it in the West, in Canada. There are also discouraging signs, such as the mainstream media’s approach, where a bunch of politicians throwing one-liners at each other, too afraid to engage in serious discussion, gets more coverage than a broad cross-section of society willing to spend a weekend discussing the issues. The Varsity has put a dent in this.
Robert Allison
