Montreal, March 18, 2025 — Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is celebrating a major victory for media accountability after the National NewsMedia Council (NNC) ruled that the Toronto Sun published inaccurate and misleading claims about pro-Palestinian protesters. CJPME’s Media Accountability Project (MAP) had filed a complaint with the NNC about a column published on October 5, 2024 in which author Brian Lilley had smeared thousands of peaceful protesters as “the equivalent of Nazis” and “terror supporters.” The NCC sided with CJPME in concluding that the Toronto Sun had misrepresented the protests in violation of journalistic standards.

“This precedent-setting ruling is a major win for media accountability and a clear embarrassment for the Toronto Sun and its smears against the pro-Palestine movement,” said Jason Toney, CJPME’s Director of Media Advocacy. “Lilley and his editors pushed outright lies to demonize a peaceful movement. Now, they’ve been forced to admit that their reporting failed even the lowest bar of journalistic credibility.”

CJPME notes that judgements against opinion articles are rare because the NNC affords wide-latitude to opinion writers. Nonetheless, the NNC found that Lilley’s sweeping accusations were not supported by evidence and ruled that the Toronto Sun misrepresented the protests in violation of journalistic standards on accuracy. As the NNC stated, “suggesting that the ‘group’ of protesters hold ‘the same views’ as Nazis is overly broad and is not supported by clear evidence. For this reason, Council upheld this portion of the complaint for inaccurate language use.”

The NNC ruling requires the Toronto Sun to publish a correction to the column and a summary of the NNC’s decision. CJPME believes that this remedy will help to ensure that any future readers will see that Lilley’s inflammatory accusations were not based on facts, and perpetuate anti-Palestinian racism. This ruling is a landmark win and will help CJPME continue to hold newspapers accountable for publishing inflammatory and misleading content against Palestine and the solidarity movement in Canada.