With journalists Garvia Bailey, Saba Eitizaz, Christina Frangou, and Salimah Shivji.

Content note: this episode includes discussion of gender-based violence and sexual assault.

It’s 2023 and we’re in Season 5. We start with online harassment and hate faced by women and racialized journalists. We need them to give voice to what’s often left unheard in Canada. This makes the harassment and abuse they experience at disproportionate levels particularly vexing.

It’s harmful to them as people and as media workers, and it runs counter to the goal of making our world better and fairer. We can’t achieve that goal without a diverse news media landscape and truth in reporting.

Online harm and harassment are on the rise globally. We often point fingers across borders, but the Coalition for Women in Journalism says that Canada is the country where the greatest number of women journalists were exposed to organized troll campaigns in 2022. This is gendered violence, and it’s unacceptable. Digital attacks aimed predominantly at women and racialized journalists victimize, belittle and, ultimately, undermine trust in facts and jeopardize press freedom.

We collaborated with the Canadian Journalism Foundation and the #NotOk campaign on a discussion with journalists in December 2022. Today’s episode features a snippet of this conversation, focused on the lived experiences of our panelists. It was moderated by CBC News correspondent, Salimah Shivji. It featured Garvia Bailey, journalist, broadcaster, and co-founder of Media Girlfriends, Christina Frangou, freelance journalist and 2022 winner of the Landsberg Award, and Saba Eitizaz, Toronto Star producer and co-host of This Matters Podcast.

Relevant Links: Full video of The Chilling Tide of Abuse Faced by Women Journalists panel, Feminist Journalism Episode of Alright, Now What?, The Landberg Award application

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Episode Transcripts

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