She will be joined in conversation with journalist Samira Mohyeddin, On The Line Media. Together, they will discuss how mainstream Western media uses biased framing in their reporting to downplay Israeli violence and dehumanize Palestinians to justify and bolster support for genocide in Gaza.
Date: Thursday, October 1, 2026
Venue: TIFF Lightbox, 350 King St W
Time: 6:00 PM (more details closer to the event)
Book signing to follow event. Purchase books via this form for a special 20% discount. (Regular priced books available at TIFF store while supplies last)
The event is co-presented by Canadian Journalists for Justice in Palestine, On The Line Media, Canadian Independent Media Fund, and Another Story Bookshop.
Book Description:
A searing indictment of Western media that lays bare how the “free press,” long tasked with speaking truth to power, instead became a vital part of the machinery that enabled the genocide in Palestine.
If you’re not writing the truth about crimes against humanity, you’re culpable in them.
Activist and Middle East historian Assal Rad is known as the “headline fixer” for her powerful posts that illustrate how mainstream Western media’s coverage of the Gaza Genocide is filled with double standards.
In Don’t Say Palestine, Rad reveals a pattern of dehumanizing language—in outlets from CNN and the AP to the BBC and The New York Times—so consistently employed throughout the Palestinian genocide that it amounts to a policy. Mainstream Western media consistently downplays Israeli responsibility, “others” Palestinians, and casts doubt on inviolable tenets of international law like the sanctity of hospitals and journalists in war zones. This groundbreaking, eye-opening exposé offers both a moral reckoning and an urgent call to action, mapping with devastating clarity the media’s complicity in whitewashing a human rights crisis.
Bios:
ASSAL RAD is an activist, historian of the modern Middle East, and a Fellow at the Arab Center Washington DC and DAWN. Her first book, The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Her writing has appeared in Newsweek, The National Interest, The Independent, Foreign Policy, and more, and she has appeared as a commentator on BBC World, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, and elsewhere.
SAMIRA MOHYEDDIN is a multi-award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and producer with extensive experience in public media. For nearly a decade, she was a producer at CBC Radio’s national flagship current affairs programme The Current, and also served as a host for CBC Podcasts and guest co-host on As It Happens. In 2023, she founded On The Line Media, an independent media company committed to amplifying the voices most needed to help audiences make sense of the world. The company’s work centres on intimate storytelling, critical conversations, and informed analysis.
