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Canada’s First Hijabi News Anchor
11-22-2016
A 29 year old news reporter has made History in Canada. To be a Muslim and be a news anchor may be a bold decision by a news organization. It may be more of a challenge if the anchor happens to be a woman. But if the female news anchor happens to wear a Hijab it can only happen in Canada.
On 17 November, City News, a local television news channel serving Canada’s largest city in the Greater Toronto Area took a very bold decision to fill the 11pm newscast on air with a First for Canadian Television with a Hijabi News Anchor.
After the newscast, her news editor pointed to her the Hijab aspect by saying, “Hey, great job! Was that a first for Canada? A woman in a hijab?” And she replied yes. After the broadcast ended she tweeted: ‘That’s a wrap! Tonight wasn’t just important for me. I don’t think a woman in hijab has ever anchored a newscast in Canada.’
Ginella Massa created a buzz as Canada’s first hijab-wearing television news reporter in January 2015.
Her mother converted to Islam. She was raised in a Catholic family from Panama, she knew that this religion would make her a better person. She was only three years old at the time of her conversion. Her mother, at the time was a single mother of two young girls. She is an immigrant to Canada.
She is proud of her identity, “I am a Muslim and I am a Canadian. I have been instilled with the values of both these identities from an early age.”
Massa joins a very select club of news anchors like Fatima Manji, a Channel 4 reporter in the UK, and Noor Tagouri, who works with US-based Newsy.
This is a great achievement during anti-Muslim sentiment in the US and Europe. According to her she has talked to many women who are journalists in the US who work behind the television scenes but face multiple challenges trying to get on air. “They’ve been told because of their hijab, that’s not going to happen. That makes me really sad because they’re being held back by someone else’s idea of what the public can or cannot handle.”
Ginella Massa reporting has been seen as a positive step in Canada but there have been some who see it as Islamization of Canada. She has received a handful of negative comments and tweets. “But this is all the more reason in today’s climate to see positive images of Muslim women,” she said.
“They are a symbol of Islam – when they wear the hijab – and that carries a powerful image. It’s so important to see positive images of us in the media.” Massa hails from Panama and grew up in Toronto, a city of 13 million people is one of most diverse cities in the world. In 2011 nationwide census about 49 percent of the city’s total population, identified themselves as a visible minority.
Canada is a multicultural country with about 6.3 million people (19.1 percent of the population) identifying themselves as being members of a visible minority. But this diversity has not been reflected in Canada’s news media, or television and film industries – and Ginella makes her presence felt in a long time.
John Miller, professor emeritus at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, conducted a survey in 1994 of racial diversity at 41 newspapers, and found that only 2.6 percent of newsroom staff (67 of 2,620 staff members) identified themselves as minorities.
A decade later in 2004 Miller conducted the same survey with 34 daily newspapers across Canada, and found that “that racial minorities are more than five times under-represented in daily newsrooms,” while “the commitment of editors to change their hiring patterns” actually declined between 1994 and 2004.
Last year, in an article for the Ryerson Review of Journalism of 11 columnists at the Ottawa Citizen Davide Mastracci described “the unbearable whiteness of Canadian columnists”, all but one was white. “Canadian columnists are predominately white, and this undermines the relevance of the conversation they help shape on a daily basis,” Mastracci wrote.
Canadaland recently attempted to get 18 of Canada’s largest daily newspapers to answer a survey on diversity in their newsrooms. Only three newspapers responded. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), employs a staff that is about 90 percent white, despite a mandate to reflect the multicultural diversity of Canada’s population.
For Ginella breaking the diversity is barrier is one step in the right direction by creating opportunities for people who might not otherwise have easy access to the industry. “If we want to truly be a voice for the people in our society, if we want to tap into the stories of the people who live among us, then we need to see diversity in our newsrooms,” she said.
“For young Muslims, it’s really important for them to see themselves not just in television, but also in positions of power, because it tells them that those are the things they can do and achieve.”“I’m trying to be the best journalist I can be,” Massa added, “and I just happen to wear a scarf while I’m doing it.” She added, “It feels really amazing to be the first hijabi reporter in Canada, but I certainly hope I’m not the last,” Massa said.
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