Journalists receive threats after Maxime Bernier encourages followers to “play dirty”

Journalists received harassing emails after People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted their email addresses and encouraged his followers to “play dirty.” 

“Check the offensive requests we’ve received yesterday and today from far left activists masquerading as journalists,” Bernier wrote in a tweet on Sept. 22, 2021, which included screenshots of email requests from journalists. 

“If you want to write to these idiots to tell them what you think of their disgusting smear jobs, here are their email addresses. They want to play dirty, we will play dirty too,” Bernier wrote in a second tweet on the same day

In the tweet, Bernier included email addresses for Neil Moss of The Hill Times, Christy Somos of CTV and Ahmar Khan of Global News. 

Moss told the Canadian Press that he saw an increase in harassing emails after Bernier’s post. 

Moss had previously emailed the People’s Party to ask about allegations of racist incidents tied to party supporters, and if party officials welcomed support from white supremacists, CBC reported.

Twitter blocked Bernier’s account from posting new tweets for 12 hours after his posts targeting journalists, CBC reported.