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

Dozens of media workers received harassing emails after People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier tweeted the email addresses of three journalists 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 Ahmar Khan of Global News, Neil Moss of The Hill Times and Christy Somos of CTV. 

All three received harassing emails after Bernier’s tweet, and dozens of other media workers reported an increase in harassment as well, said the Canadian Association of Journalists. 

Those emails included “threats of violence, sexual assault, harassment, and death,” said the CAJ, which also reported that the threats prompted some journalists to “scour the internet to ensure their personal information is not available.”

People in a white supremacist group on Telegram applauded Bernier’s tweet, Global News reported, with one commenter writing “Find me another political leader doxxing journos (lol).” 

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