(Sep. 30, 2024 / JNS)

Rob Roberts, the editor-in-chief of the National Post in Canada, was “blown away” when he learned that the Canadian Antisemitism Education Foundation intended to honor him with a community award for his newspaper’s coverage of Israel.

The 20-year-old charitable group plans to bestow its Advocate Award of Excellence, which celebrates “integrity in journalism and media,” on the Montreal-born, non-Jewish journalist at its Oct. 15 gala in Toronto. Conrad Black, the National Post founder who lost his seat in the British House of Lords this summer, is slated to offer opening remarks and present the honor.Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top storiesFree sign upBy signing up, you agree to receive emails from JNS and allied pro-Israel organizations.

“It’s obviously a nod to the whole staff of the Post. We’ve made our coverage of antisemitism a priority,” Roberts, 58, told JNS. “We tried to get Israel coverage right and balanced.”

Roberts was chosen for the award due to his leadership in fair reporting on Israel, Andria Spindel, executive director of the foundation, told JNS. He is a stand out at a time when too many “ideologically driven media” are full of “distortions, misinformation and disinformation,” she said.

“We’re getting accurate reporting, sensitive reporting and factual reporting in Canada from the National Post,” Spindel added.Related Articles

The committee that selects awardees was particularly impressed with a series of articles in the Post dedicated to Israel’s 75th birthday, according to Spindel.

The paper “published stories about Israel from all aspects of society—not just the startup nation, but they gave you insights into the history, the people, challenges, successes, failures, criticism, a variety of voices,” she said. “That was the first thing that came to conversation when we wanted to salute this success.”

She added that “we wanted to amplify the story about honest reporting because in so many places we see so little of it.”

‘Not the whole truth’

Roberts was a copy editor on the inaugural team that launched the National Post on Oct. 27, 1998. He climbed the ranks, becoming national editor and executive producer of news. He left the Post in 2015 to run the Atlantic bureau of the Canadian Press. He has also worked at the Daily News in Halifax, the Ottawa Sun and the Montreal Gazette.

He rejoined the National Post as editor on Aug. 6, 2019. The paper, which publishes from Tuesday to Sunday, has a circulation spanning the major city centers of Canada. (The Post subscribes to JNS wire content.)

Many mainstream news publications tend to “take a perspective that can effectively be considered anti-Israel,” Roberts told JNS. “It can be factual, but it can also be wrong, not the whole truth.” 

Some publications take information from Hamas—a U.S.- and Canadian-designated terror group—at face value, and others often feel “one-sided, in which the Israeli perspective is downplayed,” he said.

He and his team have “tried very hard to send the signal” that they are “supporters of Israel” and that they “see this moment with clear eyes.”

“You know, the staff understand our mission. Conrad Black founded the National Post as an explicitly Zionist newspaper, and it has always been that way in its commentary,” Roberts said.

He recognizes that many in the local Jewish community feel “fear, anger and discomfort” at having to constantly look over their shoulders.

“I’ve been determined that we cover, and call out, antisemitism every time we see it in Canada,” Roberts told JNS. “It is, frankly, more than a full-time job, and we can’t keep up. It’s just, there are problems everywhere, all the time.”

“My response to what has happened in the last 11 months is as emotional as it is intellectual, to be honest,” he added.

Under his leadership, Roberts says the Post, which he calls “small ‘c’ conservative,” is “thriving” and enjoys a “growing audience.” It currently attracts some 10 million monthly clicks, per SimilarWeb, a web analytics site.

‘The resilience of Israelis’

The stories in the Post about Israel’s 75th birthday was “a very ambitious series about that little miracle nation,” produced as “sort of a keepsake magazine,” Roberts told JNS.

It was a tribute to “a vibrant country blooming from the desert,” he added. “It’s interesting to read that now, these many months later, because that was content full of hope, and you can still be hopeful for Israel. And I very much am.”

But not everyone is ready to give the paper an award.

Roberts told JNS there is a “crop of activist journalists who come at us pretty hard—pretty regularly on this issue and other issues. They are fascinatingly unaware of their own biases and the irony of the criticism of us for our perspective.”

The Post editor visited Israel for a week in January on a delegation with fellow Canadian journalists Terry Glavin (Postmedia columnist); Brian Lilley (a Toronto Sun political columnist); and Adrienne Batra, the Sun editor-in-chief.

“It was seeing the post-Oct. 7 landscape in Israel. It was the most life-changing week I’ve had,” Roberts told JNS.

The group saw the site of the Nova music festival massacre, met survivors of the attacks and viewed kibbutz homes destroyed by Hamas terrorists.

“We learned how the Israeli authorities investigated and how they cleared the houses,” Roberts said. “They saw the worst of humanity, but I also saw the resilience of Israelis.”

The Post editor opted to extend his trip for three days. Tel Aviv left a lasting impression and, he told JNS, he had “the best bacon sandwich” of his life there.

“Honestly, I love Tel Aviv as just an urban experience,” he said. “It was a city during wartime, obviously, under some threat.”

“But the cafes were full of beautiful, young people, smoking too much and laughing, and it was just a joy to life,” he added. “Inspiring after some of the stuff I saw during the week. This is why I have so much admiration for Israelis.”