Police in Edmonton, Alberta said Monday that they are investigating charges that a female journalist was assaulted while covering a women’s march in Edmonton on Saturday.
About 2,000 women were demonstrating their solidarity with the anti-Trump protests that occurred across the U.S. — but none came to defend Sheila Gunn Reid, the Alberta bureau chief for The Rebel Media, a conservative news service based out of Toronto and founded by noted free speech advocate Ezra Levant.
Reid told the The Daily Caller that the incident was “unsurprising. We have seen throughout this latest United States election cycle that the Left can be a violent entity when challenged, even a little bit. But I won’t be deterred from doing my job and from telling the other side of the story with violence at these sorts of events. If I am, they win.”
The event was captured on camera and Reid says none of the women surrounding her either prevented the assailant from hitting her or attempted to stop him.
In the video released by The Rebel, Reid can be observed trying to interview march participants when a man approaches her and demands several times that she “go away” before threatening to trash Reid’s camera when the reporter does not go away.
The video then shows the man covering the camera lens with his hand.
That’s when Reid shouts, “He just hit me in the face!”
The man then runs away, and disappears into the crowd – with none of the female participants, supposedly demonstrating for women’s rights, attempting to stop him.
Reid received little sympathy from the crowd, as one woman tells her, “we need to ensure that nothing more happens.”
The woman then encouraged Reid to contact security.
The Rebel has offered a $1,000 reward, for the apprehension of the assailant – whom their website says has been identified.
Edmonton police confirmed Monday that a complaint has been filed.
“We are investigating it,” said police spokeswoman Noreen Remtulla.
Reid said she objected to the “hypocrisy of the entire incident, with the female enablers… telling me to ‘calm down’ and victim-blaming me for the attack.”
She said it “only shows that modern left-wing feminism is a cabal, an exclusive tribe where women like me have no place while they push a claim of inclusiveness. Feminism not about all women, as the marches clearly demonstrated, it’s a vulgar display of anti-male, anti-capitalism, anti-family angst without any real principles. When their principles were tested at the march in Edmonton, they showed they had none.”
The Canadian Press (CP) had a photographer on-scene — who apparently did not bother to record the altercation. Levant suggested the mainstream media “buried the story.”
A statement from CP denied that: “The Canadian Press does not have any pictures of the alleged altercation between the protester and the Rebel Media reporter. The photographer who was covering the protest for us, Jason Franson, did not have a good view of the apparent altercation.”