Canadian Govt silence after speech turns out to be a HOAX…
Curious silence greets discredited Hezbollah tale](Breaking News - Headlines & Top Stories | The Star) Toronto Star
ANTONIA ZERBISIAS Dec 13, 02.
Checking facts, verifying quotes and sourcing stories — these are the basics in the journalist’s toolbox. **But, when it comes to the Middle East, reporters are often accused of hammering away at agendas without first nailing down the facts. That’s because there are many who will jump in when journalists file stories that don’t fit their notion of “honest reporting.” **
But, when the stories tilt in their favour, even if they’re incorrect, these same advocates are curiously silent. Consider how, two Thursdays ago, both the National Post and The Globe and Mail ran front-page pieces based on a report the previous day by one Paul Martin. No, not that Paul Martin but the Paul Martin who, sometimes under the pseudonym Sayed Anwar, writes dispatches about the Mideast — from his desk in London, England. He sells these stories to The Washington Times, the paper controlled by the Unification Church, more commonly known as the Moonies.
On Dec. 4, Martin reported in The Times that Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah (The Party of God), had made televised speeches in which he urged “a global suicide campaign.” He quoted Nasrallah as saying: “Martyrdom operations — suicide bombings — should be exported outside Palestine. I encourage Palestinians to take suicide bombings worldwide. Don’t be shy about it.”
The next day, both the Post and Globe had A1 stories on those calls for global terrorism. While the Post qualified the quotes with a weaselly “reportedly said,” The Globe did not equivocate, repeating the quotes as if the reporter had heard them. But were there ever such speeches? And did Nasrallah actually say what The Times, Post and The Globe said he did? Not according to an investigation by CBC’s Middle East correspondent Neil Macdonald, who spent three days in Lebanon trying to track down Nasrallah’s inflammatory remarks. But he could not make the facts fit with Martin’s account of them. Not only did Nasrallah not make the speeches when and where Martin had reported, there was no evidence the Hezbollah leader had ever incited suicide bombers to go global.
“I watched the videos. I watched the speeches. I have done more research than maybe the Canadian government has done, certainly more than Paul Martin has done,” Macdonald told me on the phone from Jordan last night.** “He came up with three quotes, one of which, to be charitable, was a gross mistranslation, and the other two were never even uttered.” When CBC confronted Martin for Wednesday’s edition of The National, he “got very upset and jumped up and said this interview is over.” Eventually, he fingered Walid Phares, a Florida Atlantic University associate professor, as his source.**
Martin also told the Star’s Allan Thompson yesterday the quotes came from Phares — who read them out on the right-wing Fox News network. When he asked him if he was sure of the quotes, “Martin replied, `As certain as one can ever be in a region where there is so much duplicity.'” Funny coming from Martin, whose reporting has been discredited. Last spring, the Australian media poked holes in his journalism while The Washington Post questioned his work. Not surprisingly, the reprinting of those quotes caused an uproar in Canada, where Jewish groups and the Canadian Alliance have been pressing Ottawa to outlaw Hezbollah.
Go figure.