Antonia Zerbisias is a Canadian journalist associated with the Toronto Star from 1989 until she took early retirement from the paper on 31 October 2014. She has been a reporter and TV host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as well as the Montreal correspondent for the trade paper, Variety.
She was nominated for ACTRA awards for her documentary writing in 1980 and 1981, and won the 1996 National Newspaper Award for critical writing for her columns about magazines. Currently a freelancer, she regularly writes opinion columns for Al Jazeera English and the Toronto alternative weekly, Now.
Early life
Petros Zerbisias immigrated from Greece to Canada arriving in Halifax in 1928. He settled in Montreal where he met his wife, Loula, where they owned and operated the Deli-Q restaurant.
Career
Zerbisias has a BA in applied social sciences from Concordia University (then called Sir George Williams University).
Toronto Star
Zerbisias joined the Toronto Star as a TV columnist in 1989. She took early retirement from the Star on 31 October 2014.
Social media
On the day before retiring from The Star, during the controversy over allegations that CBC Radio personality Jian Ghomeshi had assaulted half a dozen women, Zerbisias, along with then-Montreal Gazette reporter Sue Montgomery, created the hashtag #BeenRapedNeverReported which went viral internationally and was translated into other languages.
Disputes
While focusing on entertainment, media and cultural issues for the bulk of her career Zerbisias has also taken positions in regards to the Middle East including the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the Iraq War. In the same year, she mocked Bernie Farber, then CEO of the Canadian Jewish Congress, in her blog for wearing a "Nobody knows I'm gay" T-shirt while marching in Toronto's Pride parade in a protest against the inclusion of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid in the march after he had said that political groups do not belong in the Pride parade. Zerbisias commented on Farber's decision to march as itself being a political act by sardonically writing in the comments thread of her blog, "Imagine my surprise when I saw Bernie Farber identifying himself as queer by joining a pro-Israel gay rights group in the parade." The Canadian Jewish Congress responded by filing a complaint with the Toronto Star against Zerbisias for allegedly "outing" Farber. The Stars public editor, Kathy English, ruled that Zerbisias' comments "fell short of the Star's standards of fairness, accuracy and civility," and promised to rein in journalists who "put the Star in a negative light." adding "To be fair to Zerbisias, it should be made clear, though, that she did not 'make things up,' as Farber interpreted it."