As a journalist, it’s not uncommon to find your day shaped one way or another by others’ words. Following a profile I’d written about Zexi Li, the 21-year-old face of a class-action suit against “Freedom Convoy” truckers, one reader wrote an email informing me that I was a “Nazi, racist, scumbag f****t.” (Except there were no asterisks.)
It was so extreme that it was almost funny. But it wasn’t. Every reporter has faced the sort of abuse that leaves a sickening feeling, none more so than women and visible minorities.