A Toronto television journalist has become Canada’s first anchor to don a Muslim head scarf at one of the city’s major news broadcasters.
Ginella Massa was asked to fill in on the anchor desk for CityNews’ 11pm broadcast last week. 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.”
Massa, 29, said on Friday that she became Canada’s first hijab-wearing television news reporter in 2015 while reporting for CTV News in Kitchener, Ontario, a city west of Toronto.
She moved back to Toronto, where she grew up, earlier this year to take a reporting job at CityNews.
Although the reaction to Massa’s anchor stint and reporting role has been mostly positive in Canada, she said she has received a handful of negative comments and Tweets.