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The Toronto Star has become the target of a boycott by Jewish readers angry with the paper’s Middle East coverage.
Canadians Against Media Defamation (CAMD), the group behind the boycott effort, has been leaving forms in Jewish-owned businesses along Bathurst encouraging Star subscribers to fax a cancellation to the paper “to express dismay and displeasure (at the) extreme anti-Israeli bias in recent editorials (and) news reports.”
CAMD did not respond to a request for comment.
The Canadian Jewish Congress, meanwhile, is preparing to ask the Star’s editorial board for a meeting to discuss community concerns it’s been receiving about the paper’s Middle East reporting.
CJC spokesperson Bernie Farber says Holocaust survivors in the community were particularly troubled by an editorial cartoon depicting the Star of David entangled in barbed wire.
A spokesperson in the Star’s ombuds office says the paper has also received complaints from the Arab community over its coverage. She says complaints have been vociferous on both sides and that the barbed-wire cartoon expressed the cartoonist’s opinion, not necessarily the paper’s.
