Death threats. Racist taunts. Vows of violence. Inside the increasingly personal attacks targeting Canadian female journalists

Rage, hate and harassment are everywhere in the public square. The Star is looking at the causes and costs, and what can be done to stop it.

The Taliban in Pakistan wanted Saba Eitizaz dead.

It was 2014, and the militants had issued an edict that Eitizaz and fellow colleagues working for BBC in that country were to be shot on sight. They received messages warning they were living on borrowed time.

Eitizaz fled to Canada as a refugee, she found work with CBC and then the Toronto Star, and the dread faded. But new threats have landed in her inbox - this time, targeting her for being a journalist in Canada.

An Aug. 4 message, using a fake name and the encrypted email service Mailfence, said several men were looking at the photos of female reporters, who were described in racist, misogynistic terms. Eitizaz was singled out as the men decided which ones need to be silenced first."

I have seen this before," said Eitizaz, host of the Star's This Matters podcast. It's exhausting and because of my past experience, this is very triggering for me."

Eitizaz is one of several Canadian journalists - nearly all of them women, many of whom are Black, Indigenous, and women of colour - targeted by an escalating hate campaign using encrypted email services. The emails drip with racial hatred and include threats of violence and rape. In at least one case, threats were directed at a reporter's family.

Reporters were being surveilled, the messages said. An Edmonton Journal reporter was told those watching her were instructed to break her bones.

In Ottawa, Rachel Gilmore of Global News was told in an email that Judgment Day is coming, sweetheart. You had better make peace with your god."

As the targeted women took to Twitter to share what was happening, their friends and followers, some of them also journalists, showed support - and the harassers found new quarry.

More than a dozen reporters across the country were targeted by late August.

Reporters have long been targets of harassment. Some view it as an occupational hazard. What's alarming, Eitizaz and her colleagues say, is the frequency, method and tone of these ferociously personal attacks. What's frustrating is how difficult the elusive harassers have been to square up and hold accountable.

Contacting journalists, meanwhile, has never been easier. Their contact information is online, and they're easily found on Twitter, Facebook and other popular social media platforms.

The vitriol has left some journalists avoiding story subjects that they fear could worsen the harassment. Some have considered leaving journalism entirely.

News outlets have for years tried to get social media platforms to confront the harassment. While the platforms and the encrypted email services have taken some steps, including suspending some offending accounts, the harassment campaign continues.

The harassment is not happening in a vacuum. Throughout the pandemic, surging anti-vaccine and anti-mandate disinformation campaigns targeted reporters. On Twitter, a Torstar reporter was sent a cartoon depicting him jabbed in the neck by the grim reaper holding a vaccine needle.

This fury is amplified by populist politicians, as well as prominent voices in far-right groups and the so-called freedom movement," who echo former U.S. President Donald Trump's claim that journalists are the enemy of the people." Following the 2021 federal election, some supporters of the People's Party of Canada sent threatening emails to reporters.

As the Mailfence harassment campaign intensified last month, so did the rhetoric from groups linked to the freedom movement."

You're a monster!" said Jeremy MacKenzie, father of the far-right Diagolon network and a longtime supporter of the People's Party of Canada, in an Aug. 12 livestreamed video directed to all journalists. If you even had 10 per cent of an idea of how bad of a person you are, if you had any conscience, you'd go up to the top floor of your f--ing building, and throw your body off of it right now!"

The now-deleted video was seen more than 5,000 times on YouTube and shared with MacKenzie's more than 13,000 Telegram followers. The email campaign, along with social media harassment of reporters echoing MacKenzie's rhetoric, increased in volume and vitriol after the broadcast.

Gilmore, a target of MacKenzie and his followers, said her family was threatened by an Instagram user whose page is dedicated to pictures of guns.

Prime Minister Trudeau condemned the harassment and, following calls for the federal government and law enforcement to take the threats seriously, Canada's public safety minister said he intends to work with police to help address the problem.

Many of the targeted women have already turned to police and felt unsupported, they said. They've banded together to share information to help protect one another.

While Eitizaz finds strength in that unity, the old fear is still there.

So I'm just waiting for a gunshot or for somebody to show up at my place or with a firearm," Eitizaz said. It takes just a little bit more anger or a little bit more of a feeling that you can do this with impunity for online violence to become real-life violence."

Death threats for doing your job: Listen to the Toronto Star's Saba Eitizaz, the Hill Times' Erica Ifill and Global News' Rachel Gilmore discuss the vile and often threatening online harassment they have received.

The following episode contains graphic language and references to sexual and racial violence. Listener discretion is advised.

Gilmore and others interviewed for this story said the harassment that flooded their inboxes and social media feeds hardly ever involved criticism of a particular story or an error in their reporting.

Instead, it is focused on their identity, race or gender.

Gilmore is frequently subjected to sexualized harassment. One person took photos from Gilmore's personal Instagram page and doctored them to make it appear her face was covered in semen. The altered image was posted to Twitter and has repeatedly been sent to her work email.

A 2021 survey of 1,000 Canadian journalists by IPSOS found the impact of harassment is not evenly felt in the industry. Women, BIPOC reporters and LGBQT+ are in the line of fire the most.

They are reporting greater psychological impact. And if you look at the type of harassment they are receiving, 61 per cent of LGBTQ workers say they receive comments specifically targeting gender or sexual identity. So that tells you that this is a more personal attack," said Sanyam Sethi of IPSOS.

The survey also reported that 30 per cent of journalists say they have received threats of physical violence and 13 per cent of respondents said they received death threats.

The racist language in an Aug. 4 email received by the Hill Times' Erica Ifill, one of the few Black journalists covering Parliament, was unmistakable.

Comparing Ifill to an ape - an old, racist trope meant to dehumanize Black people - the email told her to shut the f*** up" and leave the rest of the non-disgusting world alone."

I know that as I become more visible, I will get more hate mail," Ifill said. But it is almost never about my work. It is focused on the fact that I am Black and I am a woman."

While the IPSOS survey shows those groups of journalists are subjected to the most vitriolic harassment more frequently than their white male counterparts, some of those reporters feel they receive little support from their colleagues.

I am part of a group of black female writers, and they are super supportive because they understand. But beyond that, I don't feel like we're part of the larger journalism community."

IPSOS found also that harassment has driven a quarter of its survey's respondents to seek reassignment, avoid certain stories or consider quitting journalism.

Changing careers was something Olivia Bowden briefly considered while covering the convoy protest as it headed to Ottawa.

Bowden, then with the Toronto Star, sat in a photographer's car and watched as protesters tried to overturn TV news vans. She didn't feel safe doing interviews and hid her press credentials.

We're all already as journalists underpaid and overworked and if you add a layer of harassment due to your gender, race, sexuality it's hard to just think this is worth it sometimes," said Bowden, now with CTV.

If reporters, particularly those from under-represented groups, walk away from reporting because of harassment, it weakens the fourth estate, said Rachel Pulfer, executive director of Journalists for Human Rights.

Society's capacity generally to push back against conspiracy theories, against disinformation, just gets weaker and weaker as journalists are either unwilling to continue the work or unwilling to start the work because they're afraid of being hammered by online trolls or facing death threats," Pulfer said.

When Eitizaz took to Twitter to share the threatening emails she received on Aug. 4, a few journalists, mostly women, expressed their support.

But one of the first people to comment was a man who has said he wishes all reporters would die - military veteran Jeremy MacKenzie, a far-right influencer from the east coast, currently facing multiple firearms-related charges in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan.

MacKenzie is the creator of Diagolon, a far-right network that often uses memes to demean or harass its targets. Its flag - the symbol of a fictional secessionist North American country - has become a rallying symbol for anti-vaccine mandate protesters in Canada.

A week after Eitizaz's tweet, MacKenzie opined again on the email hate campaign, taking to Twitter and Telegram - a social media platform popular with anti-mandate groups - to say journalists deserved hatred and the hostility would intensify.

Twitter suspended his account, but MacKenzie wasn't finished. During an Aug. 12 livestream video that lasted nearly four hours, he said journalists were the cause of evil and he hoped they would die in a fire.

MacKenzie declined an interview request, saying a Torstar reporter had blood all over your hands, and you will be held accountable."

Attacking the press is not the sole dominion of far-right, populist movements, said Journalists for Human Rights' Pulfer, but for years it has become a staple of that end of the political spectrum, particularly for those running for office.

Rachel Kleinfeld, who studies political conflict and the breakdown of democratic institutions at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in the United States, said vilifying the press lets populist leaders dictate what reality is" to their followers.

They do this so that they can have a direct relationship with the people,' unmediated by institutions that could affect their means of communication and shaping the story," she said.

It is a political strategy playing out in Canada. The front-runner in the Conservative party of Canada leadership race, Pierre Poilievre, has made deriding the news media part of his campaign. While not condoning or encouraging harassment or threats, he has positioned the news media as antagonistic to Canadians.

Poilievre did not respond to questions from Torstar.

Other populist leaders, like the PPC leader Maxime Bernier, have leaned harder into attacking the news media - triggering a wave of vicious harassment aimed at reporters.

In September 2021, after failing to win a seat in the federal election, Bernier was asked by reporters about the endorsement of the PPC by white supremacist groups.

He lashed out on Twitter in response, and encouraged his followers to tell them what you think of their disgusting smear jobs." He posted the email addresses of three journalists.

They want to play dirty, we will play dirty too," he wrote.

Some of his followers obeyed.

All three reporters named by Bernier began receiving hate-filled emails sent by ProtonMail, another encrypted email service also being used in the current harassment campaign.

I wanted to wholeheartedly express how much I hope that all propagandists like you get brutally raped before lynched and strung up from the nearest sturdy tree or lamppost," read a September email sent to one of the journalists.

The harassment did not stop with those three reporters. At least 30 other reporters across Canada were also targeted, including the Narwhal's Fatima Syed.

Syed, a member of the Canadian Association of Journalists executive, had shared the organization's statement decrying Bernier's tweet.

Immediately afterwards, anti-Muslim screeds from a ProtonMail account landed in her inbox.

I was shocked because I wasn't exactly covering (election) issues at the time," Syed said. All I did was amplify the CAJ statement that said it is completely inappropriate for a politician to put a target on journalists' backs in this way."

Eitizaz was also among those not named by Bernier, but targeted all the same.

One message threatened that men dressed in purple - the colour worn by PPC supporters at rallies and protests - would execute her.

When the AR-15 rammed into the back of your head pops and you, already kneeling, topple over, maybe the last thing you hear is thousands of white civilized Canadian males roar at the justice served," an Oct. 1 message to Eitizaz read. Metaphorically speaking of course."

Bernier did not respond to questions from Torstar. However, in an email PPC spokesman Martin Masse defended Bernier's 2021 tweet as a response to systematic harassment from far left activists masquerading as journalists like you. YOU are the ones who created and keep feeding a climate of harassment' with your dishonest coverage of the PPC and Mr. Bernier. YOU should take responsibility for it."

Gilmore, Ifill and Eitizaz are frustrated. They don't believe police are taking their complaints seriously and feel like they were being dismissed by officers.

The Toronto Police Service only elevated the reports to the service's hate crime unit after a joint statement by the Star, the Hill Times, Global News and the Canadian Association of Journalists calling on police and federal authorities to take the threats seriously.

The service asked the newspaper to provide information about how officers treated the reporters so that the TPS members responsible can be held accountable."

In a statement to Torstar, Toronto police said it is working with officers in Ottawa and Edmonton as well as the joint forces Hate Crime and Extremism Investigative Team to identify trends and other potential victims." The service would not disclose further information about its investigation.

It has also been difficult for news agencies to find help from social media platforms.

Harassing posts and messages can be reported to Twitter, Facebook and other platforms, but many posts that contain threatening messages - including some calling for journalists to be hanged for their war crimes" - aren't taken down.

Sometimes, the platforms ban users. Twitter shut down Bernier's account after his play dirty" tweet in September 2021, and MacKenzie's account was suspended after he launched a diatribe against the targets of the Mailfence harassment campaign.

In one case involving a Torstar reporter, drawings that depicted the journalist's death were reported and taken down from Facebook, only to be restored a short time later.

A suspended user can also just create a new account and resume the harassment.

Commonplace tools, like blocking users, can sometimes help stem harassment, but can also work against reporters trying to protect themselves, said Irene Gentle, Torstar's vice president of inclusion and strategic partnerships.

Those tools might prevent a reporter from seeing a threat escalating, making them ultimately less safe without knowing it, she said.

Spokespeople from Facebook and Twitter would not consent to on-the-record interviews for this story.

In the case of the email campaign using ProtonMail and Mailfence accounts, spokespeople from both companies told Torstar they take harassment seriously and have acted to shut down the responsible accounts. Mailfence shut down the account that sent the first messages to Eitizaz. However, similar messages from new Mailfence accounts continued the campaign. Torstar could not verify if the original messages and new Mailfence emails were written by the same person.

Mailfence and ProtonMail are designed to protect the privacy of users. Messages are secured using end-to-end encryption designed to make them unreadable if intercepted.

In a statement, Mailfence said it has not experienced a situation like this in its 15-year history. The company apologized for the failure of its antiabuse filters to capture the messages before they were delivered and has launched an internal investigation.

While the service collects some data about its users, it does not turn that data over without an order from a judge in Belgium, where the company is located.

Similarly, ProtonMail is located in Switzerland and requires a Swiss court order to release user information.

Canadian police services investigating the harassment campaign would not say if they are working with Swiss and Belgian authorities.

The media outlets' joint statement not only called social media platforms to action but also called on policymakers to pull together government ministries, police and others to develop a national plan to protect journalists.

Eitizaz said it is frustrating to face roadblocks in identifying the people behind the hate campaign and worries it is only a matter of time before the threats are turned into action.

Remember what happened in 2018 at the Capital Gazette?" she said. It can become real very fast."

In 2018, a man who had been harassing journalists at the Annapolis, Maryland, newspaper for years on Twitter and through letters, showed up at the Gazette offices with a shotgun. He murdered five members of the paper's staff, including four journalists.

The fear for reporters like Eitizaz remains palpable, but she is defiant.

I am not going to surrender," said Eitizaz. I believe the work that we do is so important and I believe having a diversity of voices in our journalism is important. If I back down, if we back down, then those voices are silenced and I am not willing to allow that to happen."

This story was supported by Journalists for Human Rights' Misinformation Project with funding from the McConnell, Rossy and Trottier Foundations.

Grant LaFleche is an investigative reporter with the Hamilton Spectator. Reach him via email: glafleche@torstar.ca