Halifax police lay charges in heckling of CTV reporter during live broadcast

HALIFAX — A 25-year-old man has been charged after a crass taunt was hurled at a female reporter as she was broadcasting live from a Halifax pub.

CTV Atlantic reporter Heather Butts told her Twitter followers on Dec. 29 that the phrase was directed at her during the station’s 6 p.m. broadcast.

“Something offensive was said to me and it went on the air,” she wrote at the time, saying she planned to pursue the incident.

She was doing a short broadcast from the Pint Public House, where fans were watching a world junior hockey championship game.

A recording showed a man suddenly approach Butts and appear to make a crude gesture while calling out a sexually explicit phrase.

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She turned around and continued her report without acknowledging the comment, and later anchored the station’s 11:30 p.m. newscast.

Const. Carol McIsaac, the spokeswoman for the Halifax police, said that police have charged Nash John Gracie with public mischief and causing a disturbance.

Gracie was released on a promise to appear in Halifax provincial court on March 1.

“We applaud Halifax police for pursuing this matter,” wrote Matthew Garrow, a spokesman for CTV News.

“The harassment experienced by Heather Butts and other reporters is completely unacceptable.”

Several journalists have expressed support for Butts, saying the incident represents a broader problem of harassment of female broadcast reporters and videographers, sometimes involving a graphic phrase.

The New York Press Club, a U.S.-based association of journalists, tweeted several days after the incident that no journalist should be attacked while doing their job.

CTV News host Jayson Clay Baxter tweeted at the time: “Why does this continue to happen?”

CBC Nova Scotia reporter Marina von Stackelberg had said she experienced harassment earlier in the month while she was working on a story in Dartmouth, when in the middle of an interview, a heckler shouted an obscenity from his car and drove away.

She said it was the second time she had experienced a sexist slur, and it’s an experience that’s become all too common for female broadcast journalists.

In November, an American man was charged with causing a disturbance after yelling a vulgar phrase at CHCH reporter Britt Dixon while she was interviewing a Hamilton police officer.

Dixon said it was the third time that had happened to her over the course of four days.

In August, police charged a Newfoundland man with causing a disturbance after he yelled the phrase at a reporter. Police laid a mischief charge against another Newfoundland man who yelled the same thing toward a journalist in April.

A Toronto FC soccer fan shouted the phrase during an interview with CityNews reporter Shauna Hunt in 2015.

Follow (at)mtuttoncporg on Twitter.

Michael Tutton, The Canadian Press