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.
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.
