Death threats. Racist taunts. Vows of violence. Inside the increasingly personal attacks targeting Canadian female journalists, Canadian citizens should be especially concerned. The targets include journalists with the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s magazines, journalists with the National Post, the Globe and Mail, Global News and the Toronto Star, journalists in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary and Victoria. These attacks are taking place in real time, as Canada’s major newspapers and television stations struggle to contain the fallout from the anti-press movement that started in 2017. “In the context of [Media Matters Canada and the Free Press] and the [National Council of’s] efforts to delegitimize journalists and journalists’ coverage, this really does appear to be an attack on the integrity of journalism,” said Jennifer Granato, a lawyer and lawyer-advocacy activist with the Public Interest Law Centre who has been advising media outlets. “Just the way we talk about it, you could have a conversation with a journalist and hear them talking about how they try to be journalists, and think of what they’re doing as journalists, and you’re like ‘wow.’”
At least 40 journalists have faced threats or harassment, including two women who have had their offices spray-painted with graffiti reading “cunt” and “slut” and a photographer who was threatened with “a knife,” according to an online tally by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Five of the journalists were fired or resigned. In addition, seven have resigned or are no longer working for their newspapers. In March, one of the most high-profile targets of the anti-press movement, the Globe and Mail’s David Rohde, who was fired earlier this year after he apologized for reporting a story about a Canadian man charged with sexual assault in Sweden, was again the subject of threats. On Twitter, a user named “Ned Stark” threatened him with death, saying, “No one should have to live in fear that they may be killed by his work for this man.” In June, the National Post’s Stephen Maher, whose reporting helped spur on the #MeToo movement, received an e-mail titled “Kill
