Cathy Newman says 14-year-old daughter witnessed vitriolic online abuse after Jordan Peterson gender pay gap interview

Channel 4 presenter reveals daughter saw ‘pornographic memes of me’

Channel 4 News presenter Cathy Newman has said a torrent of vitriolic online abuse directed at her was witnessed by her 14-year-old daughter.

The news presenter recounted the harassment she was subjected to after interviewing Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson, revealing her child even saw a fake pornographic image of her.

Channel 4 was forced to call in security specialists to analyse threats targeted at Ms Newman after her interview about the gender pay gap with Mr Peterson – a controversial figure who has attracted a far-right following.

In a piece for The Pool website, the journalist, who has worked for Channel 4 for more than a decade, looked back at the vile online abuse and harassment she experienced.

She wrote: “One of the 200 or so onscreen interviews I did this year [2018] was with the controversial Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson. I challenged him about the gender pay gap, which he believes is a fiction, and what he calls the ‘murderous equity doctrine’ embraced by many modern women.

“Afterwards, his army of online followers, many hailing from the ‘alt-right’, went into attack mode, calling me a ‘c***’ and a ‘b****’, threatening to execute me and circulating pornographic memes of me on Instagram, one of which my 14-year-old daughter saw.”

“The scale of the onslaught was overwhelming. On every platform, a torrent of vile and demeaning messages. It was dehumanising.”

She argued the “barely regulated” nature of Facebook and Twitter means prominent women are forced to experience “appalling levels of misogynistic vilification”.

The presenter said she would take inspiration from women of the past who struggled against misogyny such as Sophia Jex-Blake – a 19th century physician who endured terrible bullying as she successfully campaigned for the University of Edinburgh to let her study medicine, making it the first British university to let in women.

She finished her degree and set up a practice in Edinburgh – a feat Ms Newman said would motivate her not to simply leave Twitter to escape those who abuse her.

“I suspect she [Jex-Blake] might have calmly and patiently taken the social media companies to task for making so much of the online world a hostile environment for women,” she said. “She succeeded. So can we.”

Ms Newman interviewed University of Toronto professor Mr Peterson in January last year.

After the interview, Ben de Pear, the editor of Channel 4 News, said the “level of vicious misogynistic abuse, nastiness, and threats” Ms Newman was subjected to were an “unacceptable response” to the interview.

“Such is the scale of threat we are having to get security specialists in to carry out an analysis. I will not hesitate to get the police involved if necessary. What a terrible indictment of the times we live in,” he tweeted.

Ms Newman previously said she “thoroughly enjoyed” her interview with Mr Peterson, adding: “Viva feminism, viva free speech.”

Mr Peterson, who has been branded the “stupid man’s smart person”, previously said he asked people to stop abusing the news presenter.

“I tweeted out, ‘Look, lay the hell off. Enough is enough’,” he told the Radio Times. “Or something a little bit more civilised than that. You don’t need to beat a dead horse. I’m glad I wasn’t the one who was being torn to shreds online.”

The clinical psychologist was relatively unknown outside of his field until 2016, when he released a video lecture series in which he said that his right to free speech meant he would not use gender-neutral pronouns for transgender students at the University of Toronto.

Mr Peterson has been accused of being a “provocateur”, a member of the so-called alt-right movement and a transphobe. He has criticised “political correctness” relating to issues such as transgender rights, cultural appropriation, and environmentalism.