Editor of satirical magazine charged for sharing intimate image

Halifax Regional Police laid charges against the managing editor of a satirical Canadian publication in connection with an intimate image that was published.

According to officials, in July 2025, a report was made to police that Frank Magazine published an intimate image of another person online without their consent.

Through the investigation, police have charged Andrew Douglas, 47, for sharing an intimate image without consent under the Criminal Code.

“The Criminal Code of Canada prohibits sharing intimate images of another person, including photos and videos, where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy,” officials said.

Magazine spent decades uncovering stories in Nova Scotia

Stephen Kimber, a faculty member at the University of King’s College school of journalism, previously told The Canadian Press that the magazine has a longstanding tradition in the province.

“It had a heyday when they were satirical, they were nasty, and they would uncover things people didn’t want uncovered, but they had a focus on politicians, businessmen and media stars,” he said in an interview in 2022.

“There was a period when they were breaking stories,” he recalled, referring primarily to the 1990s.

“They did some of the first stories about (former premier) Gerald Regan’s issues with women, they did stories about (former premier) John Buchanan’s trust funds. They were an important journalistic publication in this province for a period of time.”

The publication was the first to publish a story revealing that senior members of an internal RCMP team tasked with providing information to Nova Scotia’s mass shooting inquiry were married to two top female officers involved in the response. The two Mounties on the team were subsequently replaced due to conflict of interest concerns.

Under fire for publishing racist cartoon

However, Kimber said in recent years he felt the emphasis often shifted too far away from knocking the powerful off their pedestals. “Many of those being exposed were ordinary people who had nothing to say in terms of public policy or business or anything else,” he said.

In 2017, the magazine came under criticism for a cartoon that depicted El Jones, an African Nova Scotian poet who was attending a demonstration, as having a jutting chin and sloping forehead.

The magazine modified the image after critics described the image as racist and launched campaigns to remove the magazine from stores.

Douglas also apologized to readers, saying, “In our mind, we didn’t use (a) racist character, but having said that we also understand that can be totally subjective.” 

Jones, who is now the Nancy’s chair in women’s studies at Mount Saint Vincent University, said in an interview at the time she viewed the image as a throwback to racist images in magazines in the 1800s that depicted African men and women as having features closer to primates than Caucasians.