Taken together, these findings do not indicate bias in the expression of sympathy itself, but rather in how sympathetic framing is selectively reinforced, omitted, or translated across reporting layers. The consistent divergence between article bodies and headlines, particularly in the treatment of Israeli-sympathetic content, points to a pattern of differential editorial treatment that cannot be explained by contextual conditions alone.
The patterns of sympathetic coverage observed and further dissected in Innohives’ data and results suggest an inconsistency in who sympathy is extended to, where sympathy is emphasized or withheld, and how emotional framing responds to unfolding events. Based on these findings, we suggest that this inconsistency reflects a pattern of reactionary journalism in the CBC’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas war, one that does not align with the broadcaster’s stated standards and practices for balanced and impartial reporting.
CBC Coverage of the Israel–Hamas War:
A NARRATIVE FRAMING
(October 2023 – June 2025)
Executive Summary:
This study analyzes 2,789 CBC news articles published between October 2023 and June 2025 on the Israel-Hamas war and related Canadian context, examining not only what was reported but how the story was constructed. Using a mixed-methods approach combining AI-assisted narrative framing analysis, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and qualitative review, the study assesses whose experiences were centered, whose voices were amplified or marginalized, and how suffering, agency, and moral legitimacy were distributed. The findings reveal consistent, structural patterns in CBC’s coverage that extend beyond episodic imbalance or news-cycle effects. Choices in sourcing, language, and narrative emphasis produced a coherent moral framework that humanized some actors while rendering others abstract or invisible, with significant implications for public perception and the responsibilities of a national public broadcaster.
Key Findings
- Israeli Civilian Erasure: Coverage of Israeli civilian suffering dropped sharply after December 2023 to almost non-existent for the remainder of the period, despite the displacement of nearly 100,000 Israeli civilians and ongoing civilian exposure to violence.
- Humanization Imbalance: Palestinian civilians were consistently portrayed through individualized, emotionally rich narratives and direct quotation, while Israelis (including hostages) were largely subsumed into impersonal institutional labels.
- Domestic Framing Distortion: In Canadian coverage of protests and encampments, CBC disproportionately amplified anti-Zionist Jewish organizations representing a small minority of the community, often at the expense of mainstream Jewish institutions that reflect the views of the overwhelming majority of Canadian Jews.1 This selective amplification frequently appeared in contexts minimizing or dismissing concerns about antisemitism, creating a misleading impression of internal Jewish division and overstating support for anti-Israel activism.
Conclusions:
Taken together, these findings reveal a persistent pattern of editorial framing in which Pal-estinian suffering is rendered visible, intimate, and morally urgent, while Israeli and Jewish experiences are filtered through bureaucratic, political, or collective frames that strip them of human specificity. Over time, this asymmetry does more than skew empathy; it normal-izes moral detachment, making Jewish suffering easier to dismiss and its fear easier to rationalize. Dehumanization is not merely rhetorical; it carries real-world consequences for social cohesion and public safety.
- Environics Institute, 2018 Survey of Jews in Canada (2019)
As Canada’s national public broadcaster, the CBC is obligated under the Broadcasting Act2 to provide fair, accurate, and representative programming that reflects the circumstances and experiences of all Canadians. The evidence presented here indicates that CBC’s coverage of the Israel–Hamas war has not consistently met this obligation. The imbalances identified are not isolated errors but entrenched patterns embedded in language, sourcing, and narrative structure across thousands of articles. Addressing these issues is therefore not a matter of achieving superficial “balance,” but of restoring representational accuracy, fairness, and journalistic integrity consistent with the CBC’s public mandate.
PREFACE:
The preceding Innohives report offers a large-scale quantitative assessment of sympathetic framing in CBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. By analyzing thousands of articles across both headlines and main texts, and tracking how sympathy is distributed across actors, civilians, and militant entities over time, it identifies persistent structural asymmetries in how emotional framing is applied. The findings do not claim that sympathy is misplaced, nor that it should be evenly allocated in an asymmetric conflict. Rather, the report showed that the CBC consistently treated comparable subjects differently - most clearly in headline construction - where Israeli and Palestinian narratives were seemingly framed according to different editorial standards.
Quantitative analysis, however, has limits when confined to aggregate measures alone. While it is highly effective at identifying patterns at scale, it cannot on its own explain how those patterns are generated at the level of language, sourcing, and narrative construction. Metrics can show that sympathy appears more often for one group than another, or that nuance collapses in headlines, but they cannot fully capture the editorial and narrative mechanisms through which those outcomes are produced.
This is where the Narrative Framing Analysis becomes useful. Its purpose is not to re-measure sympathy or replicate the Innohives analysis, but to explain how the patterns identified there manifested. By closely examining language, sourcing, quotation practices, and narrative framing across the same body of CBC coverage, this study looks at how empathy, agency, and moral legitimacy are constructed in practice, and how some populations were consistently humanized while others were abstracted or sidelined.
Read together, the two reports are complementary. The Innohives study establishes that systematic imbalances exist and persist over time. The Narrative Framing Analysis shows how those imbalances were created and reinforced through everyday editorial and narrative decisions. Neither report claims to assess intent. Instead, together they focus on consequence: how repeated, often subtle editorial choices shape public understanding of suffering, responsibility, and legitimacy in a prolonged conflict.
This report is therefore not a challenge to the quantitative findings, but their interpretive counterpart. It is meant to add depth and clarity to what the data already show, offering a fuller picture of how CBC’s coverage operates in practice and how it aligns with the broadcaster’s stated standards and public mandate.
Introduction:
Wars are inherently devastating, leaving a trail of trauma that transcends borders, ideologies, and military strength. Even in asymmetrical conflicts, where power dynamics are vastly unequal, the moral imperative for responsible and truthful journalism remains the same: to portray the civilian suffering of all sides. When reporting ignores the agony of one population while highlighting another, it feeds a cycle of dehumanization that only deepens the divide. Authentic, deep-dive journalism serves as a bridge to a real solution by exposing the profound, systemic pain of all parties involved. Conversely, shallow narratives that cast one side solely as victims and the other as faceless aggressors strip away the human complexity necessary for empathy, ultimately pushing the prospect of a lasting peace further out of reach.
The empirical findings provided by Innohives in Part I of this report, demonstrate a measurable divergence in the CBC’s treatment of Palestinian and Israeli narratives. Nevertheless, while quantitative data is essential for identifying systemic bias in media coverage, it remains a starting point rather than a comprehensive conclusion.
Numbers can reveal imbalances in tone or emphasis, but they cannot explain how those imbalances are created or why they persist. To understand that, we need to look at the storytelling itself. This report examines how CBC covered the Israel-Hamas war by focusing not just on what was reported, but on how it was reported: whose voices were heard, whose experiences were centered, what was emphasized, and what was left out. By analyzing language, sourcing, and narrative choices across the coverage, this study explores how news framing shaped the emotional and moral understanding of the conflict for Canadian audiences.
Narrative framing refers to the way texts select certain facts or narratives and make them more (or less) prominent in order to promote a particular understanding of events. Expand-ed, to frame is “to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient… in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.”3 Frames shape not only which facts appear in the news, but what those facts mean. By highlighting certain causes, actors, moral judgments, or remedies (and omitting others) journalists construct interpretive paths that guide how audiences make sense of complex political events.
Crucially, this process is not neutral. Research in cognitive psychology demonstrates that framing works as much through omission as through inclusion. One important study4 demonstrates that frames draw attention to particular aspects of reality while simultaneously directing attention away from others. What is left out - alternative explanations, competing moral interpretations, or absent voices - can be just as influential as what is included. In this sense, news frames quietly narrow the range of meanings available to audiences, shaping which interpretations feel reasonable, which grievances seem legitimate, and which solutions appear imaginable.
Another study on the subject of narrative framing reinforces this point by showing that news is not simply a conveyor belt of information; it is a system of “interpretive packages” that link facts, symbols, metaphors, and moral evaluations into coherent narratives.5 These packages act as cognitive shortcuts, helping audiences navigate politically and morally complex issues. But they also constrain interpretation by emphasizing some meanings and marginalizing others. The study demonstrates that these packages carry real political consequences: they influence which actors appear legitimate, which grievances are taken seriously, and which solutions seem plausible. Because audiences typically rely on the interpretive cues embedded in news discourse, especially during high-pressure or emotionally charged events, framing directly shapes public opinion.
The empirical literature consistently shows that these framing choices matter. Frames influence what people notice, how they evaluate issues, and what policy responses they support; even subtle changes in wording can reverse majority opinion.6 When frames resonate with existing cultural narratives, they become even more powerful, solidifying specific interpretations as “common sense” while rendering alternatives invisible.7 Taken together, this scholarship makes clear that analyzing narrative framing is essential for meaningful media-bias research.89 Without examining how journalists define problems, assign causality, distribute empathy, and amplify or silence particular voices, our understanding of the public effects of news coverage and its broader democratic implications remains incomplete.
Authors:
The dataset used in this study was independently prepared by Innohives, a UK data analytics and AI research firm, specifically for use in the AI Sympathy Analysis that appears as Part I in this report. The subsequent analysis of that dataset via LLM, and the attendant interpretive work seen in this report was completed by Amanda Eskenasi, Director of Education at HR Canada Charitable Organization.
About the Study
This study consists of a large-scale narrative framing analysis of 2,789 CBC articles published between October 2023 and June 2025 on the Israel-Hamas war and related Canadian context. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines AI-driven content evaluation, computational linguistic analysis, and qualitative interpretive techniques, the study examines whose stories are told, how key actors are framed, and how civilian experiences - Israeli, Palestinian, and Canadian - are represented in CBC’s coverage. The objective was not only to measure relative frequency, but to understand how narrative choices shape empathy, moral perception, and public understanding.
Narrative framing analysis focuses on the subjective elements of narrative bias. That is, the things that journalists and editors can choose in how they report on the conflict: whose stories are told, whose pain is centred, which experts are consulted, and how key events and actors are contextualized. In the case of the CBC’s reporting, we asked: how often are Israeli civilians quoted directly, and allowed to tell their own stories? When they are quoted, how are their words or narratives treated? Are they portrayed as sympathetic, complex human beings or as abstract extensions of the state or military? Are Palestinian voices primarily represented through civilian suffering, political frustration, or both? Are Canadian Jews given the opportunity to tell their stories about the impact here at home, humanizing the conflict from the Canadian perspective? If so, who is allowed to speak, and how? Which voices are consistently foregrounded, and which are buried, summarized, or excluded altogether?
