The First News Anchor in Canada Who Wears Hijab

When Ginella Massa was younger and aspired to be a journalist, she decided it might be easier to go into radio rather than TV — because of the way she looked.

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“I had never seen anyone who looked like me on TV, so that sometimes makes you feel like it’s not possible. I had said some time ago, ‘Maybe I’ll go into radio because then it doesn’t matter what I look like,’” the 29-year-old said with a laugh, in an interview with the Middle East Eye.

But Massa did indeed pursue her passions — and became the first hijab-wearing Muslim woman who wears a headscarf to report on camera in Canada. And this week she reached another milestone: the first woman in a hijab to anchor a Canadian television newscast.

“As much as I knew that it was a milestone, I almost wasn’t prepared for the overwhelming response,” Massa told Middle East Eye.

She filled in as anchor for an 11 p.m. newscast on City News, a local television news channel serving Toronto, Canada’s largest city, and the Greater Toronto Area, last week.

Reactions were overwhelmingly positive.

Massa said it came from all “Muslims who feel like this tells them that they belong in this society when they see someone that looks like me reading their nightly news (and) from non-Muslims who say, it’s about time that our newscasts look like our community.”

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In an overwhelmingly white media climate, Massa’s presence is a resoundingly positive move forward.

“By denying media access to ethnic minorities, the public gets a wrong perception of reality and the place ethnic minorities have in society. And that's a recipe for social conflict – the kind of blind fear of ‘the other’ that Donald Trump is stoking in the U.S. presidential election campaign,” explained John Miller, professor emeritus at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism, who’s been studying diversity in media for over two decades.

One of the country’s largest public broadcasters, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), employs a staff that is staggering 90 percent white.

“If we want to truly be a voice for the people in our society, if we want to tap into the stories of the people who live among us, then we need to see diversity in our newsrooms,” Massa said. “I’m trying to be the best journalist I can be and I just happen to wear a scarf while I’m doing it.”