Meet Canada's First Hijab-Wearing TV News Anchor
 

Canada, eh?

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Meet Canada's First Hijab-Wearing TV News Anchor | Hollywood Reporter

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"It shouldn't be a big deal," Ginella Massa says of hosting CityNews in a traditional Muslim headscarf.

Canada suddenly has its first hijab-wearing news anchor on commercial television.

"For me, it's just a step forward in my career," Ginella Massa, who jumped at the chance to fill a vacant anchor chair at the CityNews network in Toronto last Friday night, tells The Hollywood Reporter. But when Massa ended the 11 p.m. newscast just before midnight and checked in with her assignment editor, they agreed that Canada also had taken an even bigger leap forward for diversity.

"He said, 'Was that a first?' And I said, 'Yes, I think it was,' to have a woman in a hijab anchor the news in Canada," she recalls. So Massa marked her career milestone on her Twitter account and on Facebook, where she wrote: "That's a wrap! Thankful to have opportunities like this at a time when there is so much hate and vilifying of Muslims."

Her smartphone hasn't stopped buzzing since. "People started to go, 'Wow, that's amazing that we haven't already had this in Canada,'" she adds. Massa hopes this is the last time Canadians do a double-take over her religious headscarf.

"It shouldn't be a big deal," she says. But Massa wearing a hijab hosting a major network newscast has become a big deal in the wake of Donald Trump's U.S. presidential win.

A backlash online was immediate, if only from a vocal minority.

"Hatred does exist. I've seen it firsthand: on my Twitter timeline, in the comment sections of articles written about me," says Massa, suddenly finding herself in unchartered terrain for broadcasters. She adds the square of cloth covering her head is far more than a fashion statement.

It's a symbol of faith, deeply personal, and yet outwardly showing on air. Massa became Canada's first hijab-wearing TV reporter in January 2015 when she began working as a video-journalist for CTV News in Kitchener, Ontario, two hours away from Toronto.

Massa recounts worrying about how TV viewers would receive her hijab while she reported from the field, but she needn't have. "At that time, it was overwhelmingly positive," she says. "That encouraged me to continue in my career."

But, after joining CityNews in February 2016, her first hijab-wearing anchor gig coincides with Muslims on both sides of the border feeling increasing alarm and vilification as Trump pursued, and ultimately won, the White House. "I do worry for my friends and my family in the States. I worry about traveling through the States. Because, yes, there's a head of state who has been very vocal about how he feels about Muslims," explains Massa.

She also shares widespread concerns among Canadians that hard-won rights by visible minorities and others will be lost with Trump in the White House. "There's a fear that we will go backwards, that we have made so many strides in terms of acceptance and tolerance and understanding each other. It's scary to think that all of that can be undone," says Massa.

She cites a spike in reported hate crimes as grounds for Muslims everywhere to dispel stereotypes by pridefully showing themselves off as everyday people. "That's what I'm trying to do, to do my job as a journalist. I just happen to wear a hijab while doing it," says Massa.

The Canadian TV reporter also works at a City TV station that, besides having given Fox News Channel's John Roberts his start as an entertainment reporter in the late 1970s, is known for having long embraced diversity in its hiring practices to reflect Toronto's multicultural communities.

"If we really want to tap into our diverse communities and tell their stories, then we need to have those people represented," Massa says of her network's Toronto newsroom. And she rejects any criticism that her Muslim headdress stops her from being impartial as a journalist.

"Everyone has biases. That doesn't mean I shouldn't be in this industry," Massa says as she looks ahead to her next CityNews anchoring gig scheduled for over Christmas.

I've seen them before on the news, but not an anchor. You also see them in parliament on lady politicians so it's no big deal for us. :bilmem:

I really try not to take issue with this stuff but I can't ignore that nations get taken over inch by inch these days, not bomb by bomb.

Disease isn't like a car accident. It creeps in and slowly kills you.

Unpossible. There's no way Fidel Castro's son would put up with such a thing.

you aren't free if you do something out of fear that you'll have your head chopped off if you don't do it.

Thanks! After being stuck behind Ontario license plates all day, last thing I needed.

Don't worry, they won't give a shit what she does until she stuffs a suicide vest up under that rug she is wearing, and blows the building up. But I'm sure the liberal happy go lucky idiots have thought all about that. Or.....MAYBE NOT. When she blows herself up, don't say I didn't tell you here first. I want my 15 minutes of fame for predicting acts of terror.:cert:

When they have a better foothold, it is absolutely going to be a big deal, and the smartest thing you guys up there can do is root them out of the country before they really get some say so. I would rather sit around and drink a beer with Satan than have a muzzie in my neighborhood.:yesnod:

We live next door to a family from Pakistan....nicest people on the block (except for us of course :D)
He worked for the U.S. Government,was in a terrible accident (car) and is now retired. We went to their kids wedding (sat at the "white table) and had a blast.

Not all of any race is bad.