A COVID-19 vaccine passport protest outside of Kelowna General Hospital, Sept. 1, 2021.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/David Crawford

Kamloops radio host Brett Mineer says he has a folder full of hate mail.

The Radio NL 610 AM building where he works has also been vandalized, and they've had threats called into the station.

One morning, the radio station's staff arrived at work to find a poster stuck to the front door that showed people being executed in the gallows.

Rather bizarrely, several large pizza orders have been delivered to the radio station, leaving staff to either pay for the unwanted order or send it away and leave the local business to incur the cost.

"It's not just here it's everywhere, anybody that writes a story about COVID (could) potentially find themselves getting hate," he said.

And Mineer is far from alone.

iNFOnews.ca reporter Carli Berry was being berated by anti-vaccination protester Bruce Orydzuk last summer. She started filming him and he then turned his aggression on the security guard who stepped in to help, unleashing a barrage of racist abuse.

iNFOnews.ca reporters have been screamed at and intimidated while covering anti-pandemic protests.

CBC recently published an article outlining the amount of abuse its reporters across the country have received.

And across the globe, journalists have been threatened and even attacked in Europe, US, and Australia.

Closer to home, those opposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates took their protest to Castanet's Kamloops office last weekend.

READ MORE: Kamloops protesters to rally against media outlets

Almost 12 months ago protesters changed their focus and began congregating outside the offices of Castanet and Daily Courier newspaper in Kelowna.

Which leads to the question: Why are the protesters targeting the media?

"If the media is constantly telling you that everything you believe is wrong, then what happens is you don't think you're wrong, you think the media is wrong," University of British Columbia journalism professor Dr. Alfred Hermida told iNFOnews.ca. "So then they attack the media.

"(Protesters say) you can't trust the media, they're not telling you the full story, they are distorting what's really going on, they’re not really speaking for us, and you cause confusion and you sow doubt, and then it makes it really hard for us to have a reasonable evidence-based discussion on what do we do next when you can't even agree what the facts are," Dr. Hermida said. "(Wanting) to discredit the media is a way of saying you can't trust the media, they're not telling you the truth, we are."

The media professor pointed to the current protests in Ottawa.

Originally organizers said it was a trucker protest, but when media pointed out that the trucking association has said it wants nothing to do with it, and 90 per cent of truckers are vaccinated, then that undermines the protesters' message.

Anyone who has driven past an anti-COVID protest will have seen "Media is the virus" signs along with signs whose slogans don't reflect reality.

University of Victoria journalism professor Sean Holman said the rejection of evidence and how it seeped into politics explains why protestors target the media.

"It makes complete sense when the primary dividing line in politics is around whether or not you accept or reject evidence," Holman said. "They would be protesting bastions of evidence, such as the news media."

As anti-COVID protesters have put out misleading or false information, the media fact-checking the details and pointing out it's incorrect doesn't sit well with them.

Holman said as journalists and news media are standard-bearers for evidence they then become the target of protesters.

But Holman said part of the problem does lie with journalists themselves and the way the news media works.

"Reaching an evidence-based conclusion about something, especially when you're on a deadline is hard, it's sometimes easier to quote both sides, throw them in, and it doesn't really matter who's telling the truth, the public can sort that out," he said. "We have not always been as diligent as we should be about making determinations about what is truthful and what is not."

And Holman doesn't like where the rejection of evidence is taking society.

"So much of our system is based on this idea that evidence matters, and there is a huge form of destabilization for that idea," he said.

And why are they so angry and often aggressive?

Hermida has an answer.

"When people don't feel heard and listened to and they feel marginalized, they fall back into a corner as they have no alternative but to honk their horns 24/7 and you get that anger coming through," he said.

READ MORE: Kelowna school board chair may be the most harassed in B.C. by anti-vaxers

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