The Canada Press Freedom Project: 2024 Report

Introduction

The Canada Press Freedom Project is committed to raising awareness about media rights across Canada among professionals, communities, and the general public. It hosts a continuously updated database of press freedom violations and offers tools and resources to help journalists, media organizations, educators and students identify and respond to these threats.

Since Jan. 1, 2021, the CPFP has been documenting incidents impacting press freedom in Canada, as well as those involving Canadian journalists reporting abroad.  Sort of repeats leadThe database includes violations across 12 categories, along with data on online threats and hate targeting journalists.

Initiated by J-Source in 2022, the CPFP was made possible through the first Michener-L. Richard O’Hagan Fellowship for Journalism Education. It draws inspiration from the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, created in 2017 by the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Committee to Protect Journalists. This marks the second annual report since the CPFP launched its website in December 2022. The inaugural report was published alongside the site’s launch and remains available on the platform.

Executive summary

Monitoring and evaluating infringements on press freedoms is essential to upholding the protections guaranteed under Section 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These democratic rights – described as the “freedom of the press and other media of communication” – are under increasing pressure due to technological shifts, financial instability in the media sector and external threats to journalists’ ability to work safely and effectively.

By tracking press freedom violations and examining the larger challenges facing the journalism profession, we aim to provide journalists and press freedom advocates with a clearer picture of the threats confronting the field today. These threats range from direct attacks to more subtle forces that inhibit journalists’ ability to operate freely and without fear.

Attention this year is focused on chilling statements designed to intimidate journalists or dissuade them from covering a specific issue and an increasingly restrictive environment for media workers.

CPFP has documented a rapid increase in such statements from politicians, elected officials and representatives of public institutions. CPFP has also documented a substantial increase in physical attacks on journalists. At the same time, police and public officials have continued to routinely deny access to media workers, including many covering standard daily news stories.

The 2024 data point to a continuation or normalization of some of the trends documented by CPFP and other media organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath, as well as during Indigenous land defence?  protests in 2021 and 2022. 

In addition, in 2024 CPFP began tracking pressure campaigns published by pressure group HonestReporting Canada, and recording some of the group’s campaigns which target individual media workers and publications as “chilling statements.”

CPFP has spoken with dozens of media workers who have been named by HRC. Many described subsequently receiving hundreds or even thousands of messages, which often included abuse and harassment, and floods of copy-and-paste emails generated by a form on HRC’s website. Our documentation adds to previous reporting which suggests these campaigns can chill accurate reporting on Israel, Palestine and the region. We are continuing to document these campaigns and their effects on individual media workers and on coverage of related issues.

We also encourage readers to explore the first in a new series of legal education guides, made possible by support from the Law Foundation of Ontario. This inaugural guide offers practical insights into the legal landscape of post-secondary journalism in Canada and addresses broader legal issues faced by student and freelance journalists. Additional guides covering other pressing legal topics for emerging journalists are planned for release in 2025.

The year in press freedom by the numbers

Commentary on specific categories of violations

Chilling statements

CPFP recorded almost no increase in chilling statements 2024 compared to the previous year, but saw a notable and concerning shift in the type of statements and their source. 

In 2023, five of the nine incidents recorded in this category involved police officers threatening to arrest media workers. But in 2024, elected officials and representatives of public institutions were responsible for many of the 10 chilling statements recorded – including four  which involved current and former elected officials in Canada. 

In response to journalist Samira Mohyeddin’s reporting on genocide in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, an Ontario MPP posted the name of a restaurant owned by Mohyeddin’s family, which was later vandalized. 

At a House of Commons committee in October, former federal minister Chris Alexander claimed that journalist David Pugliese had been recruited by the KGB to act as a “Russian agent.” Alexander made the claims while protected by Parliamentary privilege, and cited as evidence documents which, according to experts and Ukrainian government officials, do not back up his allegations. 

Earlier in 2024, the municipal government of Sainte-Pétronille, Que. used the threat of a lawsuit and possible funding cuts to try to shut down reporting by local newspaper Autour de l’île on citizen concerns about the municipality’s new general manager.

And in late 2024, student politicians at Kwantlen Polytechnic University passed new election regulations which banned student council candidates from speaking with the media. The ban specifically included student media. 

The ban was part of  a series of attacks by student politicians on campus media at the university. Student politicians also tried in 2024 to limit media access to council meetings. Campus newspaper The Runner was also directly targeted: editors received a petition demanding that the paper dissolve and delete all articles mentioning the student union, and copies of an edition featuring a cover story about sexual harassment allegations against the student union president were removed from newsstands and dumped in the garbage. 

Chilling statements by HonestReporting Canada

HonestReporting Canada describes itself as an “independent grassroots organization promoting fairness and accuracy in Canadian media coverage of Israel, the Middle East and issues related to and affecting Canadian Jews.” The organization monitors media coverage of issues related to Israel and Palestine, publishes criticism of articles perceived to be critical of Israel and mobilizes individuals to complain to media organizations through a coordinated series of action alert campaigns.

Many HRC posts target individual media workers by name, and typically encourage people to contact the journalist, their editors or other newsroom leaders to demand corrections, retractions or otherwise express disapproval of the reporting. 

In addition to names and contact info, HRC alerts also often include photos of the people named. In one case, HRC published, and later removed, a shirtless photo of an immigration lawyer. In another case, HRC published a photo of a doctor which had been edited to add what the doctor described as a “sexualized body.” Although these incidents did not target media workers, they provide some insight into the tactics employed in HRC’s campaigns. 

Any coverage or analysis of Israel or Palestine leaves media workers open to being accused by HRC that their reporting is antisemitic or that they support militant groups or terrorist acts – regardless of the substance of the reporting itself. Such an approach aims to silence any critique of the state of Israel and any reporting that centres the perspectives of Palestinians.

CPFP has spoken with dozens of media workers who have been named in these alerts. Many have described subsequently receiving hundreds of emails and social media messages, including messages with abusive language targeting them on the basis of their identity. One student journalist described receiving about 1,500 emails in one day after being named in an HRC complaint. Another local journalist said they received at least 500 before they blocked the source – all because they had reported on a pro-Palestinian rally. 

Good-faith criticism of journalism is healthy and important for the practice and for democracy in general. But based on CPFP’s extensive conversations with journalists targeted by HRC, it is clear that the effect of these campaigns goes far beyond reasonable criticism.

Instead, they have the effect of singling out individual journalists and newsrooms for targeted harassment. This can chill legitimate reporting, contribute to a climate of fear and self-censorship and exacerbate worries about job precarity and editorial freedom.

CPFP is only tracking HRC posts which name individual media workers or newsrooms and which also give readers a means to contact the individuals or organizations, including form letters, email addresses or links to social media accounts. These factors appear to be the most likely to precede the type of targeted harassment which we have documented. 

To build a larger dataset allowing more comprehensive analysis, CPFP has retroactively collected pressure campaigns from HRC, starting from 2021, when CPFP launched. We will continue to collect this data and publish regular updates on chilling statements published by HRC. Those updates include the total number of chilling statements published in a given time period, and – with the consent of the media workers involved – the names and publications of media workers targeted by HRC. 

We recorded 582 chilling statements by HRC in 2024, following 159 in 2023, 46 in 2022 and 62 in 2021. The sharp rise in chilling statements follows the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 and Israel’s response across Gaza and the West Bank in the subsequent almost two years.

CPFP is counting HRC campaigns in a subcategory of chilling statements, to avoid burying other data and trends. Reports on HRC campaigns can be found here in the CPFP database.

HRC has not responded to CPFP’s requests for comment.

Physical attacks

The number of physical attacks nearly tripled in 2024, with 11 recorded in 2024 compared to four in 2023. 

This substantial increase brings the number of physical attacks in 2024 to just one shy of the number (12) recorded in 2022. However, while most of the incidents recorded in 2022 were connected to the convoy protests in Ottawa and elsewhere, where media workers regularly faced harassment and physical violence, the physical attacks recorded in 2024 are not tied to a common event.  

Just over half of the 2024 incidents affected media workers covering daily news stories, including two separate incidents affecting TVA journalists in Montreal, as well as a photojournalist in Cobourg, Ont. In a particularly concerning incident, two men targeted a radio host while he was attending a community event in Calgary, punching him repeatedly after allegedly telling him they were unhappy with his reporting. 

Outside of Canada, CPFP recorded two physical attacks targeting three Canadian journalists reporting from the West Bank and Gaza. 

Police actions

Police interfered with the work of journalists in nine of the cases documented by CPFP in 2024. Although this represents a decrease of two incidents compared to 2023, the nature and severity of the incidents recorded show some police services continue to demonstrate a lack of concern for basic press freedoms. 

Police in Edmonton and Montreal were responsible for all but one of the incidents recorded by CPFP in 2024. 

In two concerning incidents, journalists were arrested covering news events in Edmonton (Brandi Morin, Ricochet) and Montreal (Savanna Craig, CUTV). In both cases the journalists identified themselves to police and made it clear that they were doing their jobs. Charges in both cases were dropped after months – part of what Reporters Without Borders has described as a “malicious pattern” of “catch-and-release tactics” used by Canadian police. 

In a third incident, Montreal police officers threatened to arrest a journalist, questioned her credentials and addressed her as “Girl!” before grabbing and pulling her forcefully away, then standing in front of her camera to obstruct her view and mocking her while she filmed from behind a police line. 

Montreal police also pepper-sprayed one independent photojournalist at two separate protests within a week in November 2024 (and a third time in May 2025). 

Several police forces also continued the problematic practice of using “exclusion zones” to deny access to media workers covering important stories. 

Canadian courts have repeatedly found in favour of media workers asserting their right to report from exclusion zones. In Sept. 2024, the RCMP’s Civilian Review and Complaints Commission also found that the B.C. RCMP’s broad use of exclusion zones in police protests was “unreasonable.” The practice is also the subject of an ongoing investigation by the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner in B.C. 

And yet, Canadian police and authorities persist: on two occasions in January 2024, police in Edmonton blocked off large areas to prevent journalists from covering the eviction of people living in an encampment in a public park. Over several days in August 2024, RCMP enforced an exclusion zone ordered by Parks Canada and the Municipality of Jasper to deny media workers access to the town in the aftermath of a wildfire. 

Denials of access

CPFP recorded 11 denials of access in 2024. In three incidents, journalists were denied access to press conferences and public events: Infrastructure Ontario refused to give two journalists access to a briefing on the redevelopment of publicly owned land in Toronto, and the government of Nova Scotia reversed a longstanding policy and blocked journalists from attending the swearing-in of new cabinet ministers. 

As noted previously, four of those incidents involved police. In Edmonton, police denied access to journalists covering the eviction of people living in an encampment in a city park, during which they also arrested journalist Morin, with Ricochet. In Montreal, police threatened to arrest Pivot journalist Oona Barrett, who was covering a protest outside the Montreal airport. 

In August, media workers were denied access to the town of Jasper, Alta., to cover the aftermath of a wildfire. Local authorities and Parks Canada said that journalists were initially denied because of safety concerns,   but the ban continued well after the fire was under control, in order to give residents “time and privacy to begin their healing process,” according to Parks Canada. 

This justification echoes claims previously made by police and authorities in other jurisdictions, including Vancouver and Toronto, who have prevented journalists from covering encampment evictions out of a stated concern for the privacy of the people being evicted. 

Intimidation/harassment

This category includes incidents in which media workers are subjected to intimidation, threats and verbal harassment — in the field or as a result of their work — from members of the public. 

CPFP documented five instances in which attempts were made to harass or intimidate media workers. This total includes two incidents in which journalists were approached and harassed by individuals who knew who they were and singled them out in public while filming them. 

Subpoena/legal order

CPFP recorded two incidents in this category, which includes incidents in which media workers are compelled to produce source materials to a government agency or are ordered to testify in court. 

Canadian journalist Catherine Herridge, who was ordered in 2023 by a U.S. federal court to answer questions which would identify a source for a series of 2017 investigative articles, was held in contempt in March 2024 when she refused to do so. 

In October 2024, environmental activists arrested after climbing a bridge during a protest in Montreal were released with unusual bail conditions which prohibited them from speaking with journalists. Quebec’s public safety minister also criticized media coverage of the protest and said that “giving air time to these extremist groups proves them right and encourages them to do it again.” 

Border stop

This category includes incidents in which media workers are refused entry to a country or are stopped at the border by authorities and experience delays, interrogations, extended questioning or have their devices searched. CPFP tracks international incidents involving Canadian or Canada-based media workers and media workers affiliated with Canadian media, as well as cases involving media workers trying to enter Canada. Incidents in this category are relatively uncommon. 

CPFP documented one border stop in 2024: Canadian journalist Neil Hauer was detained for 16 hours and refused entry to Turkey at Istanbul airport. He has said that he believes the ban was a result of his reporting on Nagorno-Karabakh, where Azerbaijani authorities have been accused of ethnic cleansing.

How the CPFP defines journalism and journalists

In documenting press freedom violations, the CPFP adopts an inclusive approach to defining who can be affected. We consider any incident a violation when an individual’s right to access, gather or report information is infringed upon while engaging in journalistic activity in good faith, or when they are targeted for past efforts to do so.

While academic research and media associations have long provided frameworks for identifying journalistic practice, journalism differs from regulated professions – like law, medicine or trades – which rely on formal credentials or licensing. There is no universal accreditation for journalism; instead, it is defined by the nature and intent of the work.

Journalistic activity typically involves collecting and verifying information, applying editorial judgment and preparing content for publication or broadcast. Legal precedents and professional guidelines, such as those from the Canadian Association of Journalists, underscore that journalists are distinguished not by title but by their actions. For example, during a protest, the role of a journalist is identified by their effort to report or document, rather than to participate.

Given the diversity of roles and identities within the field of journalism – ranging from reporters, camera operators, and photojournalists to student journalists, independent creators or those excluded from traditional media institutions – the CPFP uses the broader term “media worker.” This inclusive term recognizes the wide spectrum of individuals who may face threats to their press freedoms, regardless of their formal job title or affiliation.