In the fall of 2021, I found myself the target of an orchestrated harassment campaign.

It was the first time I had ever heard of HonestReporting Canada (HRC)—a pro-Israel media watchdog. The campaign, which called on its members to “condemn” me, came in response to a TV report I produced for CTV News Montreal on the Wet’suwet’en protests. The weird part is that my coverage had nothing to do with the Middle East.

Montrealers gathered in support of the hereditary chiefs who were in a stand-off with the RCMP and the Coastal GasLink company in British Columbia. It was a strong and straightforward story. The night it aired, colleagues congratulated me. One anchor and senior producer wrote: “Your story was excellent. Well worth the energy you obviously put into it. Your expertise shone through.”

However, the next morning I woke up to an onslaught of emails and DMs from HRC members who took issue with a visual detail: one of the people I interviewed was wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestinian flag. HRC labeled this man an “anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protester,” and what followed was weeks of relentless harassment flooding my inboxes, demanding that I be fired, claiming that “people like me should not exist.”

Some said they knew where I lived.

I forwarded every message to my managers, every time requesting four things: advice and support for how to deal with the harassment, that CTV issue a cease-and-desist letter to HRC, clarification on whether there were any rules against showing a keffiyeh or Palestinian flag on TV, and clarification on whether leadership stood behind my coverage.

Each time, I was met with silence or indifference.

Then, several months after the broadcast, my story had quietly disappeared from CTV’s website. The video report and copy had been unpublished without explanation or consultation and replaced with a short copy rewritten by a young, white male colleague. My name had been removed from the byline along with the quote from the protester.

— When Genocide Wasn’t News by Martin Lukacs, Dania Majid, Jason Toney (30%)