It has been an unprecedented year for press freedom violations.
The onslaught of harassment, intimidation, persecution, and violence against the most vulnerable and precarious journalists in the industry has only amplified.
Coalition For Women in Journalism (CFWIJ), which has helped more than 600 journalists, women leaders, and activists to safety since October alone, and has been tracking journalism rights violations faced by women in the industry.
It is not just online abuse and harassment women in journalism are facing — though it certainly makes up a large portion of it.
What makes these journalism — and often human rights — violations so egregious, the CFWIJ argues, is not the acts themselves. It is the fact that most abuse against women in journalism is often done with impunity.
According to CFWIJ data, at least 12 women journalists were murdered in 2022, as of November 25.
READ MORE: How newsrooms can handle attacks on journalists
In the same period of time, researchers logged a minimum of 97 incidents of women journalists being held under the custody of law enforcement, up from 63 in 2021. That number includes 42 who were arrested in 2022 only, as well as others who were released. The CFWIJ says Iran is the most punitive country for women in journalism so far this year, with 35 arrests.
Additionally, they tracked 49 different organized troll campaigns carried out against women in journalism.
Of the 12 female reporters who have been killed so far this year, four murders occurred in Mexico. Three women journalists were killed in Ukraine as well as two others in Palestine. Other countries with a fatality include Iraq, Chile, and Afghanistan.
The 12 deaths are on track to match 2021 as the deadliest year for women in journalism on record, double the number of fatalities in 2020.
There have been at least 79 women journalists subjected to legal harassment in 2022, while 77 female reporters were physically assaulted while working — most of which the CFWIJ say are by the police.
While Turkey topped the list of countries with the highest number of violations so far this year, Canada is on track to be the most likely country for female reporters to be subjected to major online trolling campaigns.
2022 on track for record of number of journalists jailed
On Wednesday, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) released their annual census of reporters incarcerated across the globe.
As of December 1, the census showed 2022 is on track to break the record for the number of journalists jailed around the world.
The census found that 363 reporters were taken into police custody in the first 11 months of the year, up by 20 per cent compared to last year.
The five countries where persecution of journalists was most common were Iran, China, Myanmar, Turkey, and Belarus.
The census pointed to the rise of increasingly oppressive efforts by authoritarian governments to silence journalists as a main contributor to the record-breaking total.
At least 22 of the 49 reporters arrested in Iran were women, reflecting the prominent role female reporters have played in covering a women-led uprising in the wake of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s suspicious death in police custody.
The census highlighted the wide variety of tactics authoritarian leaders are using to weaponize press freedoms. Aside from imprisoning reporters, governments are also creating “fake news” laws, arbitrarily using legislation to criminalize journalism, and the exploitation of technology to spy on reporters and their loved ones.
Online harassment of female journalists unprecedented
A December 1 panel at Carleton University unpacked the unprecedented rise in online abuse facing journalists, especially racialized women in journalism.
The panel included three female reporters who have been subjected to widespread, systematic trolling campaigns for simply doing their job — the Toronto Star’s Saba Eitizaz, Global TV’s Rachel Gilmore, and Hill Times columnist Erica Ifill. They were joined by federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, who has publicly called for an end to the harassment of reporters, adding the federal government is committed to protecting press freedom in Canada.
In 2021, moderator and CBC President Catherine Tait noted, Reporters Without Borders found that the vast majority of journalists agreed the internet was “the most dangerous place for journalists.”
Data showed nearly half of female reporters reporting self-censorship to avoid exposure to violence and one-in-five either considering not renewing their contracts or leaving their job altogether.
In her opening remarks, Tait noted that “society will need to change to ensure that this behaviour is simply deemed unacceptable, just as human trafficking and drunk driving are.” Global News’ Online Editor-in-Chief Sonia Verma agreed, noting she’s told her staff they have no obligation to be on social media anymore.
But for freelancers like Iffil who don’t aren’t unionized with salaries and benefits, leaving social media could be fatal to an already precarious career.
“This idea that you can just be off social media, I’m sorry, it’s for people who don’t understand media,” Iffil responded. “This idea that we can make this choice to just step away from the noise is ludicrous. It does not reflect an intersectional look at media today.”
“You cannot compare people’s existence as who they are and who they want to be to drunk driving,” Ifill said.
Ifill pointed out that the same freelancers who help build the content of some of the country’s biggest media organizations do so with no institutional protection, adding that those who are most likely to be freelancers are racialized, queer, trans, disabled or otherwise underrepresented in an industry failing to follow through on a promise of “diversity of voices.”
Eitizaz agrees. She knows about the harassment and persecution of journalists all too well.
“Safe has now become an alien word to me,” she said, calling it ironic considering she came to Canada to seek safety.
Eitizaz fled Pakistan after her reporting on state complicity in human rights abuses led to “a horrific, organized online hate campaign” against her. So when the same thing happened to her in Canada, she was shocked but not surprised.
“I was doxxed, I was vilified, assaulted by misogynistic, ethnophobic violent abuse — just like here,” she said. “The police didn’t believe me. They didn’t help me — just like here.”
“Giving up space and disengaging from this will not disengage from the hate,” Eitizaz said. “The hate follows you until the systemic issues are addressed.”
All three women shared stories of reporting graphic and threatening emails, messages and videos, only to be told by law enforcement that they don’t fall under any offenses of the Criminal Code.
Eitizaz highlighted the fact that, due to the dismissiveness of law enforcement and media organizations, many vulnerable journalists were left to their own devices to combat the hate they were receiving.
“I think that burden should not have been on us,” she said. “I can’t even post my work without having to think about what repercussions I’m going to be dealing with.”
Speaking at the panel, Mendicino directly called the harassment and intimidation both racist and misogynistic, as well as intentional and criminal. He pointed out the same journalists receiving these kinds of hatred are the same ones who are forced to break through barriers to make it in the industry.
Mendicino acknowledged the role of journalism as one that is a “democratically essential responsibility to tell stories from perspectives that have not historically been told.” He added it’s the federal government’s responsibility to be a “bridge to law enforcement” to keep all spaces, including online ones, safe for everyone.
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