Here’s What Parliament Ignored About HonestReporting Canada

In November 2024, the assistant director of HonestReporting Canada (HRC) and two others were charged with mischief for alleged graffiti in Toronto, including allegedly spray painting “FUCK GAZA” on a tree planter. These charges were withdrawn in March 2025 after the three each paid $1,000 to the Sick Kids Foundation.

HRC has continued to employ their assistant director. Its decision to do so has seemingly had no impact on the willingness of newsrooms to accept and implement the changes to Israel coverage it demands, with HRC claiming to have prompted at least three modifications to articles in major publications over the past week alone.

Apparently, HRC’s decision to continue employing their assistant director has also had no impact on the willingness of some in Canada’s Parliament to regard it as a voice worth listening to.

On March 10, Mike Fegelman, HRC’s longtime executive director, spoke before a House of Commons (HoC) Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage study on the “State of the Journalism and Media Sectors.”

Fegelman’s written briefing submitted to the committee contained a range of complaints about Canadian media, including that the CBC interviewed a guest who he claims “spread the unfounded ‘genocide’ slur 12 times.” This CBC interview took place the day before HRC’s assistant director was arrested.

Fegelman also called the Gaza death tolls “fabricated,” portrayed reports on starvation as “unfounded,” referred to media workers killed by Israel as “so-called journalists” with “connections to Palestinian terrorist groups,” and alleged that “this media coverage directly contributes to a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes.”

One of the committee’s vice-chairs, Bloc Québécois MP Martin Champoux, critiqued HRC’s methods, claiming (according to the live translation) they “look like harassment” because the organization invites its readers to email journalists directly. Fegelman later replied, “We have about 80,000 subscribers from coast to coast. If anyone engaged with a member of the media in a way that we felt was unprofessional, strident, knee-jerk reactionary, we would be the very first to either try to sensitize them to our concerns, and if they weren’t listening and were uncooperative, we would take them off our list.”

Champoux did not ask about the associate director who remains at HRC.

At the beginning of his written briefing, Fegelman described HRC as “a non-profit organization that ensures fair and accurate Canadian media coverage of Israel and the Middle East.” Here are some tidbits about HRC that he did not mention, compiled for the benefit of Canadians who may not already be familiar with the group.

HRC’s first executive director is reported to have previously worked in PR for the Consulate General of Israel in New York.

The aforementioned assistant director previously worked as the director of communications for Israel’s embassy in Ottawa.

In 2008, Israel’s ambassador to Israel called HRC’s work “invaluable.” The consul general of Israel in Montreal from 2007 to 2011 referred to HRC as an “invaluable ally.”

In July 2023, Fegelman said that HRC wants to “create a digital army for Israel.” In October 2023, he said the group had established a “war room” that would allow it to “act as Israel’s sword and shield.”

In September 2024, HRC sent out a fundraising email announcing that they planned to launch a “‘name and shame’ database” of what they referred to as “prominent, vile and hateful anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activists,” which they hoped would “restore deterrence and procure consequences against our adversaries.”

In October 2024, HRC tweeted a topless photo of an immigration lawyer alongside a link to a post on their site about him. Also that month, HRC complained that a CBC article about people dressing in KKK outfits at a Halloween dance at a fire hall in Cape Breton “ignored the persecution of Jews.” The article contained interviews with Black firefighters in the community. HRC wrote, “Our public broadcaster demonstrates its continued indifference to Jewish suffering; Jews are referenced only when they can be villainized & vilified.”

In December 2024, HRC used an existing photo of a physician, altered it in a way that changed her outfit by, she wrote, “put[ting] it on a sexualized body (that is not mine) with parts of ‘my’ breasts and bra showing,” and then used that as part of a featured image for a post on their website about her that initially had the byline of the aforementioned associate director. The image was eventually replaced.

In August 2025, Fegelman called a Palestinian journalist assassinated by Israel a “Hamas terrorist.”

In March, HRC responded to a Liberal MP expressing concern about Lebanese civilians being killed by Israel and the impact it had on the community in her riding by tweeting, “Why don’t you ask your Lebanese constituents to call on Iranian terror proxy Hezbollah to stop firing missiles at Israel and disarm?” alongside a winking face.

To learn more about HRC, check out these articles from The Maple.

First, read my 2024 investigation into HRC that has helped shape much of the reporting on it in Canadian media that has come since.