Death threats. Racist taunts. Vows of violence. Inside the increasingly personal attacks targeting Canadian female journalists — especially women working in newsrooms — has unfolded a pattern. As the Canadian Press’s newsroom has grown, the number of threats has increased. We have received hundreds of anonymous death threats. Some of those are threats of violence or death. We have been threatened. It is nothing compared to what some reporters faced when their stories went public in the late 1990s in Toronto.
Many of those threats were directed not at journalists, as is the case when the CP was the target of threats and intimidation in the 1990s, but at their families or at other reporters. For example, the threats that led to the CP’s decision to shutter its newsroom in Toronto came not from a single individual but came, as in the case with us, from a group of individuals working together.
I have said that it is dangerous to come out in any profession, but especially in journalism, and I stand by that. This is because of the nature of the media. The news media are a very vulnerable group, especially when in your professional life, if you have a family and friends who may suffer a loss or an injury, it is a little bit of an emotional burden to tell your friends and colleagues and co-workers because you know that what you are saying could be taken in a totally different way.
As a consequence of the nature of journalism, the public must trust those who report the news because they are going through the same issues. This is why women are not given the same prominence in the newsrooms of all media. It is very hard to break through.
One of the challenges journalists have is that because of the nature of journalism and the fact that they are covering subjects and issues that are considered sensitive to the public, it is very hard to penetrate the public consciousness as much as we want to penetrate it. And then there are other challenges. First, we live in a culture that is different from the public sphere. You might have people who feel that the media covers these issues in a
