{"id":82832,"date":"2025-07-22T09:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T09:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/82832\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T09:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T09:31:09","slug":"online-campaign-targeting-globe-journalist-draws-condemnation-as-an-attack-on-press-freedom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/82832\/","title":{"rendered":"Online campaign targeting Globe journalist draws condemnation as an attack on press freedom"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Reporter <\/b>Carrie Tait, who has been investigating allegations of political interference at Alberta\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Someone also recently disguised a phone number to look like Ms. Tait\u2019s mobile number to make calls to multiple people.<\/p>\n

Ms. Smith condemned the targeting of Ms. Tait, saying any allegations of criminal harassment should be investigated by police, as did the province\u2019s Opposition New Democrats, who said it was an attempt to intimidate a journalist.<\/p>\n

Brent Jolly, president of the Canadian Association of Journalists, said the effort to follow Ms. Tait and the former staffers <\/b>is a \u201cbold-faced assault\u201d on press freedom. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe tactics that are being used are stuff you would expect out of somewhere in Russia, or some tin pot dictatorship. That\u2019s not how we\u2019re supposed to do things here in Canada. But clearly, you know, whoever is behind this is operating by a different playbook,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s fair and reasonable to question reporting in the public interest, Mr. Jolly said. But media criticism shouldn\u2019t extend to intimidation, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhere 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\u2019s right to know,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The anonymous account emerged earlier this month, promising to reveal Ms. Tait\u2019s sources in her reporting of the health care procurement allegations. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The account was suspended last week.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s 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\u2019s Auditor-General.<\/p>\n

Ex-CEO of Alberta health authority asks for quick ruling in wrongful dismissal suit<\/a><\/p>\n

A podcaster named David Wallace, who calls himself a \u201cpolitical dark arts operative\u201d and who has been critical of The Globe\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

In a video posted to X on Monday, Mr. Wallace said The Globe\u2019s reporting on the targeting of Ms. Tait was a \u201cshot to intimidate me\u201d and denied any suggestion he was involved in surveillance of the reporter.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of insinuations have been made. No. 1, I\u2019m not following Carrie Tait anywhere. I\u2019ve 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The podcaster went on to say that he has done \u201cawful, horrible business\u201d for politicians and political parties in his past and had been an \u201cawful man in service to awful people,\u201d but he said his only interest now is the truth. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

\u201cTo me, the stuff he was doing crossed the line,\u201d Mr. Velshi told The Globe. \u201cIt was a complete violation of my privacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u2019s office that he was \u201cgeo-fencing\u201d her home \u2013 using technology that tracked digital devices coming and going from the politician\u2019s house.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to normalize it, but I want people to know that this happens in Canada,\u201d Ms. MacLeod told The Globe on Monday. \u201cIt\u2019s not just in the United States or Great Britain, there\u2019s some sinister things that women have to deal with in our democracy. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt has a chilling effect, like you can\u2019t do your job, and that\u2019s what their motive is. But then you start to second-guess yourself and say, \u2018Is it really happening?\u2019 Or when you start to notice yourself not wanting to go outside, and you really get into your own head.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Mr. Wallace did not respond to e-mailed questions from The Globe on Monday. <\/p>\n

The verified X account for Alberta\u2019s Premier viewed some of Mr. Wallace\u2019s videos, according to the watch history on his account.<\/p>\n

Ms. Smith\u2019s 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 \u201cI\u2019m not talking about that\u201d and laughed as she walked away.<\/p>\n

In an interview with CTV later in the day, she said, \u201cI condemn it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one should be harassing anybody, and I don\u2019t comment on sock puppet accounts,\u201d she added. \u201cI have no idea who\u2019s behind it, and so if there\u2019s criminal harassment, I hope that the RCMP finds them, punishes them to the full extent of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kathleen Ganley, Alberta\u2019s New Democrat caucus whip, said the effort to trail Ms. Tait was clearly intended to intimidate and dissuade reporters from doing their job. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is deeply disturbing that a reporter doing her job is secretly being followed, photographed, and targeted in an obvious intimidation campaign on social media,\u201d she said in a statement. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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\u2019s interest in transparency.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An online campaign that targeted a Globe and Mail journalist, in part using surreptitiously taken photos of her…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":82833,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2148,2138,671,104,2132,692,2147,2131,2143,2144,2140,2133,2130,79,407,746,2142,2137,2159,2134,2135,454,2139,1165,728,2149,108,2154,2155,50,2157,2152,2156,2150,2153,2136,85,2146,80,2145,2151,1458,158,1164,2141,1154,107,2158],"class_list":{"0":"post-82832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-alberta","9":"tag-arts-news","10":"tag-bc","11":"tag-breaking-news","12":"tag-breaking-news-video","13":"tag-british-columbia","14":"tag-canada","15":"tag-canada-news","16":"tag-canada-sports","17":"tag-canada-sports-news","18":"tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","19":"tag-canadian-breaking-news","20":"tag-canadian-news","21":"tag-economy","22":"tag-education","23":"tag-environment","24":"tag-federal-government","25":"tag-foreign-news","26":"tag-globe-and-mail","27":"tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","28":"tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","29":"tag-government","30":"tag-life-news","31":"tag-lifestyle","32":"tag-local-news","33":"tag-manitoba","34":"tag-national-news","35":"tag-new-brunswick","36":"tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","37":"tag-news","38":"tag-northwest-territories","39":"tag-nova-scotia","40":"tag-nunavut","41":"tag-ontario","42":"tag-pei","43":"tag-photos","44":"tag-political-news","45":"tag-political-opinion","46":"tag-politics","47":"tag-politics-news","48":"tag-quebec","49":"tag-sports-news","50":"tag-technology","51":"tag-travel","52":"tag-trudeau","53":"tag-us-news","54":"tag-world-news","55":"tag-yukon"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82832\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}