CTV has decided to part ways with Rachel Gilmore.
The network axed her election fact checking segment after just one appearance.
On March 25, Gilmore announced that she had been brought on to join CTV Your Morning every Friday.
"It's just a little segment," she said at the time. "I think it's gonna be really fun and I can't wait."
Many were quick to highlight Gilmore's track record on matters of truth, pointing to debunked claims she made about the events of the Freedom Convoy in 2022.
"In a shocking new low for [CTV News], they are having this disgraced disinformation peddler lie directly to their viewers under the guise of 'news'," Conservative media relations staffer Sebastian Skamski wrote in a post on X. "The Liberal media will do anything to ensure a fourth Liberal term. Remember that the next time they 'fact check' Conservatives!"
According to Press Progress, the decision was made by the show's executive producer, Jennifer MacLean.
"I'm sure you're well aware of the push back we received after your first appearance on the show,” MacLean told her via telephone. "The tricky thing for me is it just ends up being a distraction from what we are trying to do."
She went on to note that "the 'who' we are talking to is kind of drowning out the 'what' we're talking about right now," adding, I don't feel like we have the bandwidth to deal with it."
"I knew that you had that troll base and I knew that we would get some sort of reaction," MacLean said, referring to Gilmore's detractors, "but I really did not realize the extent of the volume of that push back that we had."
In a video response, Gilmore called her ouster "an attack on press freedom."
"If opportunities can be stripped from journalists simply because enough people repeat the same bad-faith narrative," she asked, "how can anyone withstand the career impact of doing work that matters?"