Why print a police lie?

CBC News chooses to go with the lie rather than refusing to promote police propaganda

Post from the Palestinian Youth Movement in Toronto

On Tuesday, the Palestinian Youth Movement posted a video on Instagram with this caption: “On Sunday December 10th, protesters gathered in front of the U.S. consulate for International Human Rights Day, calling for an end to military violence and repression across the world: including the end to Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people. The peaceful protest was disrupted by a police assault against two protesters, one of whom was pinned to the ground by multiple officers, and punched repeatedly while an officer pressed their knee to the protesters neck. The protester’s glasses were broken in the assault, and he sustained injuries at the hands of Toronto Police.”

The video that is attached shows a police officer kneeling on the neck of an individual for almost twenty seconds. Cops surround the assault so that it’s hard to see it clearly the entire time, but the individual who captured the video does a good enough job that we can definitively see the knee on the neck.

There is no question here.

Unless, that is, you are CBC News.

The CBC questions whether or not what happened is what happened, despite what is plainly clear in the video. The headline in the unbylined article reads: “Video appears to show officer with knee on protestor's neck, police say it didn't happen.” They managed a veritable twofer here: both phrases are false.

The video doesn’t appear to show anything — it absolutely shows that a cop thrust his knee onto someone’s neck and kept it there for nearly 20 seconds with the weight of his body overtop of his knee. You can see the video for yourself if you scroll to the bottom of the article and click on the external link.

The police saying that no officer had his knee on someone’s neck is a clear and objective lie. And yet, CBC News allows both the hedging word “appear” and the police lie in the headline to cast doubt on what you’re about to see in the stills of this video embedded in the article. In fact, the word “appear” appears six times in the article’s 771 words. The word violent appears twice; brutality, dangerous and excessive? Not once.

Here’s the first paragraph of the piece: “ A group of protesters who staged a rally in support of Palestinians last weekend released video Tuesday of a violent arrest that appears to show an officer kneeling on a man's neck. But Toronto police say the tactic — something the former chief said cops are not trained to do — wasn't used.”

CBC News’ secret writer (there is no byline for this story) decided to make the story about the police’s denial, rather than focus on what happened, how the individual who was assaulted is doing, or about the outrageous police brutality that Palestinian protesters have been routinely subject to over the past two months.

And even though they admit that, “The new video provides a line of sight between two of the officers who encircled the man and appears to more clearly show the officer's knee on the man's neck,” CBC News still gives the police the benefit of lying.

Here is the response from police to being shown the video, a quote that CBC decided to publish without directly challenging: “‘On review of available footage of this matter, we maintain that the officer did not place his knee on the suspect's neck,’ Stephanie Sayer, a spokesperson for the force, said in an email.”

Now, actual journalism would be not publishing this comment, certainly without challenging it directly. It’s a straight up lie. We can very clearly see that the officer restrained a man using a manoeuvre that is known to murder people. We are also told by CBC News that Toronto police aren’t trained to use this manoevre, making the real story about the unchecked police brutality in Toronto, rather than whether or not we can indeed believe our eyes and our ears. By the way: if you want to read actual journalism about what happened here, check out Nur Dogan with The Maple.

The end of the article explains how former police chief Mark Saunders criticized this move when he was chief and former police board chair Alok Mukherjee said that he was surprised to see the video. CBC News does not identify the victim (who was charged after the assault). CBC News does not quote anyone from the Palestinian Youth Movement or anyone who was present.

It’s wreckless and dangerous for anyone to kneel on someone else’s neck or head. It has killed Black men from George Floyd to many other Americans, to several in the UK. But let’s be clear: the real story here isn’t whether or not the police knelt on someone’s neck (they very clearly and obviously did), it’s why are Canadian police operating with such impunity?

From pre-dawn raids to arrest people for putting paint on a window to lying about something that we can plainly see, CBC’s reporting very literally enables police violence. To give police the benefit of the doubt when the evidence of their violence is plainly and clearly on film shows a complicity with policing that is, frankly, dangerous. With journalism like this, why would police ever tell the truth? What reason do they have to not lie to journalists if they can do so brazenly and still be treated as if the jury is out on whether or not they did what we can see they did?

It isn’t as if it’s just CBC, nor is it as if it’s just in Toronto. Edmonton police killed two people in the past week. Last week, RCMP killed a woman while attending to a so-called wellness check in Wilkie, SK. Winnipeg police killed an Indigenous man who was in mental distress in October. In stories about most of these acts of violence, police comment goes unchecked. We’re supposed to take them at their word, every single time.

If police using a dangerous and unsactioned manoevre on a pro-Palestinian protester on camera is still given the benefit of the doubt by Canada’s national public broadcaster, then of course what happens when the cameras aren’t rolling is going to be deadly and horrific. Police operate like that because they can. They lie to this unnamed CBC reporter because they know that the reporter would never print that the official word from the police is a straight up lie. They will be given the benefit of the doubt.

Average people smell this smarminess a mile away and it’s corrosive to public trust in journalism.

In the clown parade of articles that feature “official comment” from police sources that are more likely to be lies as they are likely to be true, the police know that more often than not, they’ll get away with the lie. There are simply no consequences for police if they lie. And all we can do is hope that the cop removes his knee before the person dies. Or knocks gently at the door during a welfare check rather than busting in and startling someone already in crisis, resulting in an altercation. Or speaks gently to a man who is raving in traffic rather than simply shooting him dead. Or, or, or. All we can do is hope because the institutions are set up to try and rein in police are in collapse — they can’t or don’t or won’t do what they’re ostensibly supposed to do.