David Pugliese reported from Kandahar province in Afghanistan in 2008: Unembedded, outside the wire and unarmed in the heart of Taliban territory.
For nearly forty years, Pugliese has courageously reported on the Canadian military and international conflicts. He has been the senior writer at Esprit de Corps Magazine since 2005.
He was recently recognized by the Canadian Association of Journalists for that courage in his reporting.
By Newell Durnbrooke
Ottawa Citizen journalist and Esprit de Corps senior writer David Pugliese has received a prestigious award from the Canadian Association of Journalists for his continued reporting on military issues.
Pugliese received the Charles Bury President’s Award at a ceremony in Calgary on June 1.
CAJ President Brent Jolly noted the award was in honour of Pugliese’s decades of reporting on “Canada’s most secretive government department, the Department of National Defence.”
Pugliese has produced more than 10,000 articles over the course of his career, with a large number exposing wrongdoing at DND and in the Canadian Forces as well as the massive waste of tax dollars in bungled military procurements. Other times, Pugliese has reported on the failure of military leadership to take care of the troops, including in April 2023 when Canadian soldiers serving in Poland were facing financial hardships because of pay problems.
His coverage, however, has angered the Canadian Forces and government leadership and has resulted in a number of attempts to stop Pugliese from reporting.
DND officials have tried on three occasions to convince Pugliese’s editors to remove him from the defence reporting beat.
In 2013, media outlets reported that Pugliese was put under military police investigation after a senior defence official office falsely claimed the journalist had published classified information. After a two-month investigation, police concluded the data published was actually taken from a U.S. Navy press release.
In 2019, the DND illegally handed Pugliese’s private information and questions he had been asking about problems with a naval shipbuilding project over to the powerful Irving corporation. Using that information the Irvings threatened Pugliese with a lawsuit if he went ahead and published the article. The article was ultimately published. The story was accurate and no lawsuit followed.
The latest attempt to stop Pugliese from reporting came in October 2024 when former Conservative cabinet minister Chris Alexander falsely accused the reporter of being a Russian spy. Alexander claimed that documents he presented to a Commons committee were received from Ukraine’s KGB archives and had been verified by experts.
Freelance journalist Justin Ling, who appeared at the same hearing along with Alexander, later admitted the KGB claims about Pugliese were first circulated by Canadian Forces officers.
Ling also faced criticism from fellow journalists for his own unsubstantiated claims about Pugliese.
But Alexander’s story fell apart when the KGB Archives in Ukraine stated they had no records about Pugliese. In addition, Alexander failed to produce any evidence the records he presented at the Commons hearing had been verified by experts or were even real in the first place.
Pugliese appeared before the Commons committee Nov. 7, 2024 pointing out the so-called documents were replete with numerous factual errors and falsehoods.
“If these (spy) claims aren’t ridiculous enough, some of those associated with this fabrication, also allege that I play hockey for the Russian embassy hockey team,” Pugliese said in his acceptance speech for the Charles Bury award. “This is despite the fact, I can’t skate and have never actually played hockey.”
MPs at the commons committee ultimately apologized to Pugliese for Alexander’s false claims. The former minister made his statements under parliamentary privilege, meaning he could not be sued for defamation.
“These allegations were nothing more than a McCarthy-esque smear job,” the CAJ’s Jolly said during the Charles Bury award ceremony. “But what they show us is a shift in tactics to spread disinformation. Rather than question the accuracy of a deeply reported investigative story, bad actors now attack a journalist’s credibility in an effort to impugn critical inquiry.”
