Online campaign targeting Globe journalist draws condemnation as an attack on press freedom

An online campaign that targeted a Globe and Mail journalist, in part using surreptitiously taken photos of her in public, was widely condemned on Monday, including by Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and a national journalism organization that called the campaign an attack on press freedom.

Reporter Carrie Tait, who has been investigating allegations of political interference at Alberta’s provincial health authority, has been the target of an anonymous account on X, called The Brokedown, which posted photographs of Ms. Tait meeting with two former political staffers in the Alberta government. The account also referenced her movements around Calgary.

Someone also recently disguised a phone number to look like Ms. Tait’s mobile number to make calls to multiple people.

Ms. Smith condemned the targeting of Ms. Tait, saying any allegations of criminal harassment should be investigated by police, as did the province’s Opposition New Democrats, who said it was an attempt to intimidate a journalist.

Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said the effort to follow Ms. Tait and the former staffers is a “bold-faced assault” on press freedom.

“The tactics that are being used are stuff you would expect out of somewhere in Russia, or some tin pot dictatorship. That’s not how we’re supposed to do things here in Canada. But clearly, you know, whoever is behind this is operating by a different playbook,” he said.

It’s fair and reasonable to question reporting in the public interest, Mr. Jolly said. But media criticism shouldn’t extend to intimidation, he said.

“Where it crosses the line is when you get into efforts to intimidate people, to surveil them, to spoof their phones, to target them and their sources in the service of suppressing the truth and attacking the public’s right to know,” he said.

The anonymous account emerged earlier this month, promising to reveal Ms. Tait’s sources in her reporting of the health care procurement allegations.

One photo, posted on July 10, showed Ms. Tait with a woman in a park with a dog. A second photo, posted two days later, Ms. Tait sat with another woman on a patio at a Mexican restaurant.

The account was suspended last week.

Ms. Tait has been reporting on a wrongful dismissal lawsuit filed in February by Athana Mentzelopoulos. The former CEO of Alberta Health Services alleges that she was terminated over an internal investigation that she ordered into procurement issues at the agency. She alleges that pressure was placed on her by staff in Ms. Smith’s office to take action that would benefit certain private companies, and that she was dismissed two days before she was set to brief the province’s Auditor-General.

Ex-CEO of Alberta health authority asks for quick ruling in wrongful dismissal suit

A podcaster named David Wallace, who calls himself a “political dark arts operative” and who has been critical of The Globe’s coverage of the health care procurement issue, alluded to the contents of the photographs before they were posted. He told The Globe last week that someone sent him the photographs but that he has nothing to do with the anonymous account.

In a video posted to X on Monday, Mr. Wallace said The Globe’s reporting on the targeting of Ms. Tait was a “shot to intimidate me” and denied any suggestion he was involved in surveillance of the reporter.

“A lot of insinuations have been made. No. 1, I’m not following Carrie Tait anywhere. I’ve never interacted with this Brokedown Alberta account or their proprietors. I did not receive any information from them. Not a lick. And I can prove it,” he said.

The podcaster went on to say that he has done “awful, horrible business” for politicians and political parties in his past and had been an “awful man in service to awful people,” but he said his only interest now is the truth.

Mr. Wallace has a history of alleged surveillance. Alykhan Velshi, the ex-chief of staff under former Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown, told The Globe on Monday that the podcaster was targeting him in 2018 and posting photos of his whereabouts around Toronto. Posts about Mr. Velshi by Mr. Wallace were later removed by Twitter for violating its terms of abuse and harassment and hateful conduct.

“To me, the stuff he was doing crossed the line,” Mr. Velshi told The Globe. “It was a complete violation of my privacy.”

That same year, Mr. Wallace was accused of surveilling former Ontario MPP Lisa MacLeod. The website Press Progress reported in 2022 that Mr. Wallace had written in a message to a staff member in Premier Doug Ford’s office that he was “geo-fencing” her home – using technology that tracked digital devices coming and going from the politician’s house.

“I don’t want to normalize it, but I want people to know that this happens in Canada,” Ms. MacLeod told The Globe on Monday. “It’s not just in the United States or Great Britain, there’s some sinister things that women have to deal with in our democracy.

“It has a chilling effect, like you can’t do your job, and that’s what their motive is. But then you start to second-guess yourself and say, ‘Is it really happening?’ Or when you start to notice yourself not wanting to go outside, and you really get into your own head.”

After moving to Alberta, Mr. Wallace was accused of being part of an alleged plot to entrap then-Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi in a scheme that offered him a fake bribe. The same year, he told The Canadian Press that he had been hired to get the phone logs of Alanna Smith, a former CP reporter who now works for The Globe.

Mr. Wallace did not respond to e-mailed questions from The Globe on Monday.

The verified X account for Alberta’s Premier viewed some of Mr. Wallace’s videos, according to the watch history on his account.

Ms. Smith’s office initially declined to comment when asked by The Globe last week about the videos viewed by her X account. When a Globe reporter asked Ms. Smith about the story in Huntsville, Ont., on Monday, where she was attending a meeting of Canadian premiers, she said “I’m not talking about that” and laughed as she walked away.

In an interview with CTV later in the day, she said, “I condemn it.”

“No one should be harassing anybody, and I don’t comment on sock puppet accounts,” she added. “I have no idea who’s behind it, and so if there’s criminal harassment, I hope that the RCMP finds them, punishes them to the full extent of the law.”

Kathleen Ganley, Alberta’s New Democrat caucus whip, said the effort to trail Ms. Tait was clearly intended to intimidate and dissuade reporters from doing their job.

“It is deeply disturbing that a reporter doing her job is secretly being followed, photographed, and targeted in an obvious intimidation campaign on social media,” she said in a statement.

“This is an attack on journalism. This is incredibly inappropriate behaviour against anyone, particularly when it is targeted at a reporter who was asking questions of the government and pursuing the public’s interest in transparency.”