Online harassment against female journalists is a growing problem, UN report suggests

Rachel Gilmore says she feels the likes of she's creating a paper shack for her have inevitable bump off.

Gilmore, 31, an main(a) journalist in Montreal, has been the target of what she describes as "aggressive and rampant" online harassment and violence for years.

It escalated when Gilmore, who previously worked for CTV and Global News, started reporting on online extremists. Last year, when her name was listed on a right-wing website claiming to expose people celebrating the murder of American activist Charlie Kirk, she says the threats just amplified.

On social media, she documents the countless death threats, violent rape threats and sexual deepfakes she's received.

She's spoken publicly about the time a man posted a video about her where he's waving a knife, and about the photos people post to share her exact location. She's described the time two men she unmasked in a story about active clubs found and approached her at a small music venue.

"I started to feel like I was just giving them a paper trail for my inevitable murder. And that when I'm murdered, they'll at least have some leads they can follow."

A new UN Women report released Thursday puts numbers to what many female journalists such as Gilmore already know: Online violence against women in the media is growing, becoming increasingly sophisticated, and is affecting female journalists both professionally and personally.

More than one-fifth (22 per cent) of the female journalists and media workers surveyed for the report said they reported incidents of online violence to the police — a rate that's doubled since 2020. And 25 per cent reported they've been diagnosed or treated for anxiety and/or depression associated with what they've experienced.

The report defines online violence as "any act that is committed, assisted, aggravated or amplified by the use of information communication technologies or other digital tools which results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual, psychological, social, political or economic harm."

Nearly half of female journalists and media workers said they self-censor on social media due to online violence — an increase from 30 per cent in 2020 — and 22 per cent said they self-censor at work.

The global survey was conducted in 2025 across 119 countries and the report was based on the responses from 641 women. The findings are not generalizable to the public due to the methodology used.

While this report is new, the problem of online harassment isn't. Numerous reports have documented the degree of hate and harassment, particularly against female journalists and journalists of colour, including in Canada.

For instance, Canada currently sits at 20th place out of 180 countries in the 2026 Reporters without Borders World Press Freedom Index, already having dropped seven spots in 2025 to 21st place. The ranking notes that in Canada, "online harassment ... Poses a threat, especially to female and minority journalists."

In 2022, the International Center for Journalists published a global study in which nearly three-quarters of the survey respondents identifying as women said they had experienced online violence in the course of their work.

The same year, the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian Journalism Foundation published a report on online hate against journalists of colour, and noted that it's led to some leaving the profession entirely.

Another 2022 report from the Canadian Journalism Forum on Violence and Trauma found that more than half of all media workers surveyed were targets of harassment, but that "women encountered harassment and violence at every turn."

Brent Jolly, national president of the Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ), says we need more documentation like the UN report because it shows the scope of the problem, and that online violence and harassment is part of a pattern meant to push people out of the public sphere.

More and more Canadian newsrooms are offering supports to their employees like safety plans and buddy systems, while some workplace unions are pushing for remedies in their collective agreements, Jolly said. But he added that doesn't help the growing proportion of freelance and independent journalists working across the country.

At the same time, he said, a change needs to happen at the public policy level and in law enforcement to investigate when harassment happens via telecommunications.

"I know that takes time, but at what cost and with what damage are we prepared to sort of sit on our hands?"

Decoding the hate speech used to get around social media bans

Gilmore, who now runs her own media company called Bubble Pop, says it's her experience that employers and authorities often tell journalists to scale back their presence on social media when they are harassed online.

And that's a huge problem, she says, because many journalists need to be present online to do their job. That's not to mention how most targets of online violence are women and people of colour, so in silencing them we lose those critical and necessary perspectives in journalism, she added.

"The response shouldn't be to sort of doubly punish victims who are already victimized by the harassment in the first place, by then forcing them to make themselves smaller."

Gilmore says she knows the people who attack her online will use this story to further taunt her, and to validate their beliefs that they haven't done anything wrong because the police haven't acted.

"It's not going to stop me," she said. But, she added, the lack of institutional protections is demoralizing.

"How do I ethically turn around and tell other young women to get into this business?" she said.

"I just tell them it's part of it, and you have to know what you're getting into and be clear-eyed about it."

Senior Writer & Editor

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