Steve Paikin hosted the interview-based current affairs show The Agenda on TVO for decades until 2025, and he was known for taking a supposedly balanced approach.
In an email, he told me this week that he doesn’t support “any political party, any government, any country, or take public positions on controversial issues.”
But when he appeared in a photo posted to X in November by Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel with 15 prominent pro-Israel Canadians, saying she had asked them to “stand with Israel,” people were understandably suspicious.
I emailed Paikin to ask about the trip. Based on his responses, I think we should see the trip as a troubling reminder to watch out for how his journalism often upholds the status quo regarding Israel.
There are many ways journalists can in effect support one position or another without outright saying “My position is X or Y.” And often, powerful journalists who claim to take no positions on issues actually end up supporting the status quo.
Take for example the Feb. 8 Paikin Podcast interview with Canadaland’s Jesse Brown about Brown’s new podcast series What Is Happening Here, which is about antisemitism and focuses largely on the pro-Palestine movement in Canada. (The Paikin Podcast is not affiliated with TVO and Paikin is no longer a TVO employee.)
At one point, Brown is talking about Aliyah, an Israeli government policy that allows any Jewish person in the world to move to Israel and become a citizen. Brown asserted this as a “right” and “what Israel exists for.”
Paikin didn’t question these assertions. A different interviewer may have pushed back and asked whether that right should come at the cost of Palestinians having their homes and land taken away, and Israel refusing Palestinian’s right to return to their homeland. An interviewer might have asked whether that discriminatory reality — made possible by Israel’s policy — stokes animosity. There were a number of opportunities for those kinds of questions, and including or omitting them does a lot to shape the audience’s understanding.
Paikin’s seeming pro-Israel interview bias has also been criticized by groups such as Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East back when The Agenda was on the air.
And sometimes Paikin does state what should be considered a controversial opinion. In a December exchange on X, Paikin said that “Russia isn’t a democracy. Israel is,” with the explanation that there are reputable elections there. But 5.6 million Palestinians who live under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza can’t vote. For that reason, and because of the severe restrictions imposed on those millions of people, Israel is considered an apartheid state by most reputable human rights organizations, and definitely not a democracy.
Russia isn't our longtime ally. Israel is. Russia isn't a democracy. Israel is. Putin wins rigged elections. You may not like the outcome of Israel's elections, but they're more reputable than Russia's. Putin's visited Canada 2x. Netanyahu's visited Canada 12x. It's different.
— Steve Paikin (@spaikin) December 23, 2025
Paikin’s assertion wouldn’t be considered very controversial, though, within the confines of mainstream Canadian political discourse. Most of our politicians and pundits say that Israel is a democracy, after all. But in my view it is an incredibly controversial opinion, and I think most people would agree, if only major media figures like Paikin would provide audiences with a more balanced perspective.
The trip
It is within this context that the most recent discussions around Paikin’s trip to Israel happened.
So, what do we know about the trip?
It was organized by the Consulate General of Israel in Toronto and Western Canada and took place in November 2025. The invite received by two Toronto city councilors has been made public:
The trip was brought to public attention on Nov. 25, 2025, when Israel’s deputy foreign minister Sharren Haskel shared this tweet on X:
There were several criticisms that flowed from this. One was about the technicalities of the trip regarding journalism ethics, and the other was about the appropriateness of going on the trip at all.
Because the invite, which was made public later, is for a “fully hosted visit” where “costs are provided by the Consulate of Israel,” some assumed that Paikin’s trip had been paid for by Israel. It is against journalists’ ethics to take gifts from those they might report on in their work.
Reached by email by The Grind, Paikin stated that, “After I was invited to join this trip, I indicated I would do so, provided I paid my own way. That’s a pretty standard way-to-go in journalism. The organizers had no objection. I asked how much, and they said $4,500. So that’s what I paid.”
Paikin says he paid for the trip personally, and it had “Nothing at all to do with TVO,” his former employer where he continues hosting shows and writing columns. He says he is a freelancer there, though is still using a company email account.
The costs of the trip for Toronto city councillors Mike Colle and James Pasternak, according to municipal records, was around $6,200 to $6,300 each. Pasternak paid some from his office budget and took some as a gift from Israel, while Colle took the whole amount as a gift. They were cleared of any wrongdoing by city hall because while they can’t take gifts from lobbyists, foreign governments aren’t considered lobbyists.
Asked about the discrepancy between their amounts and his, Paikin said he didn’t organize the trips so didn’t know and couldn’t know why that would be the case. “I know we didn’t take the same flights, so perhaps that had something to do with it. I didn’t fly back to Toronto, only to London, U.K.”
Nothing unusual?
In his email to The Grind, Paikin said he went on the trip as a journalist, not as a supporter of Israel.
Asked whether he felt the government of Israel was able to influence him to use his public persona to promote the positions the Israeli government wants popularized, he responded: “I don’t, particularly since I haven’t written a single column, or hosted a single show about the trip, since my return. Not one.” He adds the trip came with no expectation of any coverage.
“I should also tell you, it doesn’t scandalize me that they wanted an opportunity to influence our opinions. Doesn’t every government try to influence the media to see things their way? That’s certainly been my experience in my 43 years in journalism.”
I pointed out that his interview with Brown was in large part about what is happening in Canada regarding public opinion around Israel and its actions. The invite for the trip specifically stated that, “This journey comes at a pivotal moment, as the conversation around Israel in Canada continues to evolve.”
Paikin initially said his his interview with Brown wasn’t relevant to the trip because the interview didn’t discuss “Israeli foreign policy with Hamas.” But he didn’t respond to a follow-up question about whether he spoke with Israeli officials about support for Israel within Canada.
When asked if he had gone on other trips organized by foreign governments that had the stated purpose of influencing the participants, he responded:
“I believe I took a trip to Poland back in 1992, in which I was part of a group that spoke to government officials and attended ceremonies related to a particular anniversary. But I repeat: the tone of your question leads me to believe you think there’s something particularly nefarious in what went on during this trip. I’m trying to tell you that EVERY country, and EVERY government, and EVERY opposition politician (and we did speak to some of them as well on this trip) tries to influence us to support their interests. There is nothing new in that.” [Emphasis his]
When asked, Paikin clarified that by “opposition,” he meant members of the Israeli Knesset (parliament) who were not in the governing party, rather than, for example, Palestinian leaders in the occupied territories (Gaza, the West Bank, southern Lebanon) who oppose the Israeli occupation. He says he spoke to one Palestinian journalist on the phone, as the journalist didn’t have time to see Paikin in person. He also met one-on-one with Canada’s ambassador to Israel.
I asked if he could acknowledge that having politicians contact him as part of his daily work is different from going on a five-day trip where he knew the whole point would be for that government to influence him to use his position to their benefit.
He responded, in part:
“Your question seems to imply that we spent five straight days getting briefed from sun up to sun down by government officials. Not true. Not true by a long shot. In principle, it’s no different from going, for example, to a four-day political convention in Canada, where you will be inundated with the party line the entire time. One listens, but one also listens to other views as well. Again, Dave, your questions all seem to pre-suppose that I’m incapable of independent thought, and that these foreign ministry officials are just so crafty, they can get us all to believe anything they say.”
What conclusion are we supposed to take?
I followed up one more time to ask what he thought about criticism of his Israel-led trip, given the credible accusations of genocide against the apartheid state, and if he could understand why people now wonder whether his participation means he is helping Israel pursue its interests.
After all, he is sitting there smiling in the photo posted by Israel’s deputy foreign minister along with a caption about rising antisemitism in Canada how he was being called on to “stand with Israel.”
This appearance of collaboration is very different from a journalist attending a party convention and sitting at a media table.
“I can’t answer or be responsible for the stupidity of government officials who tweet out pictures with captions of their choosing,” Paikin responded. “When that happened, I told them what a stupid thing they’d done and they apologized profusely. But it was stupid.”
He did not indicate what was stupid about it.
Paikin added that people will make up their own minds about him, and that this was his “fifth trip to the region in my four-plus decades of doing journalism. I’ve interviewed people on all sides of the conflict. I think my capacity for fair-minded reporting has been pretty well established over the years. If you or others want to accuse me of things, such is life.”
To be honest, I’m less interested in accusing Paikin of things and more interested in showing how his journalism upholds the status quo around Israel. I’m not so naive to think that better media literacy is going to save the day. But I think in this moment when journalists, wittingly or not, are helping rehabilitate Israel’s image, we should be aware of what is happening and demand better.
Paikin’s trip to Israel is part of the story. The bigger story is the ongoing failure of Canadian media to fairly cover the occupation, the genocide and Israel’s public relations offensive.
UPDATE, Feb 14, 2026: This article has been updated for clarity and to add information about Paikin’s current relationship with TVO.