Canada: Freelance Journalist Nora Loreto Denied Access to Conservative Party Event

Security officers at convention harass Loreto as she tried to report, threatening to send her to jail

Location: Canada, Québec City
Date: September 8, 2023

Freelance journalist Nora Loreto denied media accreditation to the Conservative Party of Canada convention and harassed by event security. Denying accreditation without providing a valid reason raises serious press freedom concerns. Right-wing parties around the world have used similar tactics to obstruct critical journalists. The Coalition For Women In Journalism condemns this attempt to censor Loreto and calls for the Conservative Party of Canada to explain why she was refused accreditation. 

“You can’t intimidate me. You don’t scare me,” Nora Loreto told the security guard who threatened to arrest her for attempting to interview delegates outside the Conservative Party of Canada’s convention in Québec City. 

The president of the Canadian Freelance Union and freelance journalist Nora Loreto was forced to report from outside the convention after being denied access to the event on September 8.

Loreto, contracted to cover the convention for The Maple, says she fulfilled all the requirements and has previously been accredited for Conservative events.  

Despite this, Loreto's application was rejected by the party’s Director of Communications, Sarah Fischer, who refused to explain the denial.

“I'm not leaving until you tell me,” Loreto tells CFWIJ about the exchange with Fischer. “And so, I stood there for two and a half or three hours, waiting for them to tell me.”

In response, Fischer suggested that Loreto could gain access to the convention by paying an observer's fee of $1700. Loreto's interactions with the party's Director of Communications were frustrating, as she felt that Fischer had limited interest in resolving the issue. Loreto requested a lanyard to identify herself as press while outside the event, but this was met with disdain by Fischer.

To gauge the situation, Loreto decided to explore the convention hall while waiting for a resolution. However, she soon noticed that a security guard was following her. As Loreto approached the registration desk, the head of security confronted her. 

According to the journalist, the security head forcefully pushed her with his body and demanded she continue walking.

Refusing to comply, Loreto argued with the officer. “Look, you're not going to stop me from interviewing people,” Loreto said. He then “went on a rant about how he's a police officer and, he will see that I'm arrested. That he'll call the local police and I will be in jail,” she adds.

Loreto noted that unlike her, the other journalist, who was also denied access, was not trailed by security officers. She also witnessed other journalists being provided press credentials despite not having pre-registered while she was continuously refused. 

The journalist says three journalists from different publications were denied access to the convention. Loreto thinks the refusal to allow them entry may be linked to their coverage of climate change, as she doesn’t see any other correlation between the work of the three outlets, The Mapel, The Breach, and The National Observer.

The Conservative Party convention organizers have yet to respond to Loreto's claims or explain the denial of her media accreditation.

Years of Harassment from the Right

For Loreto, the denial of accreditation was not an isolated incident, revealing her history of being targeted by conservative media and organizations. Loreto faced an online campaign so vicious that it escalated to a complaint against her to child protection services. Since speaking out against far-right narratives surrounding a mosque shooting in Quebec City in 2017, she has faced relentless online harassment. 

The next year, she gained nationwide attention after tweeting about a large sum of money raised in the aftermath of a bus accident that killed members of a junior hockey team. For this, she faced backlash and harassment from right-wing activists and organizations, including the People's Party of Canada (PPC) leader Maxime Bernier. 

Maxime Bernier has gone on to doxx media workers by tweeting out the email addresses of journalists who sent him media requests. 

“No one wrote a story about what happened to me,” Loreto tells CFWIJ about the smear campaign against her and her disappointment in her fellow journalists. “No one looked at how effective it was for conservatives to fundraise off me, the far-right media to fundraise off of me. And ever since that moment, I've occupied this place in Canadian media where I'm quite radioactive for certain people.” 

Despite her years of experience working with CBC and the Washington Post, among others, Loreto’s career suffered because of the backlash. Mainstream media outlets stopped hiring her, and she felt that numerous media companies had blacklisted her. 

“I'm condemned by the Premier of a province, Sarah Palin weighs in,” says Loreto of the onslaught. “It really tried to destroy my journalism career.”

However, Loreto continues to report and investigate. She recently wrote a book on Canada’s handling of the pandemic and is currently writing a book about Canadian politics. Her current subject matter makes her restriction from the Conservative Party event even more frustrating.

Obstructing journalists from outlets deemed less favorable to their causes has become a familiar tactic of right-wing political parties worldwide. Guardian reporter Flora Garamvölgyi was thrown out of a US Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC) event in Hungary in May. The journalist was in mid-interview with US Senator Rick Santorum when security pulled her away and told her to leave. In Spain, right-wing party Democracia Ourensane labeled journalist Lorena R de La Torra an “enemy” and banned her from attending its events.

The withholding of access and accreditation to limit the ability of journalists to report on political events of public interest is an attack on press freedom. Political parties deny access to their events in attempts to discredit and humiliate journalists. The goal is to deter the journalist from covering future events and undermine their ability to report on what they have been assigned to cover. Political parties must provide equal access to media organizations, regardless of their editorial stance. 

The Coalition For Women In Journalism urges all political parties to stop weaponizing access to events to target critical journalists. We stand in solidarity with Nora Loreto and condemn the treatment she received from the Conservative Party of Canada. We call on the party to explain why it obstructed the journalists.  

The Coalition For Women In Journalism is a global organization of support for women journalists. The CFWIJ pioneered mentorship for mid-career women journalists across several countries around the world and is the first organization to focus on the status of free press for women journalists. We thoroughly document cases of any form of abuse against women in any part of the globe. Our system of individuals and organizations brings together the experience and mentorship necessary to help female career journalists navigate the industry. Our goal is to help develop a strong mechanism where women journalists can work safely and thrive.

If you have been harassed or abused in any way, and please report the incident by using the following form.