The following is a step-by-step account of what has gone on at Canary Media Limited this year. It follows multiple online accusations against the CEO, Steve Topple, his wife, Nicola Jeffery, and several staff members.
During late 2025 and early 2026, multiple staff members were either arrested or facing court proceedings specifically thanks to the Zionist lobby.
Around the same time, journalist Rachel Charlton-Dailey asked if she could create a trade union group, which the CEO said yes to and asked her to get on with. This never happened.
The Canary received multiple vexatious complaints from Zionists (totalling over 50 alleged breaches of the press regulator’s code in around three months), all of which IMPRESS dismissed except one.
Then, the Canary was debanked. Lloyds originally asked for information about the business structure and where certain funds came from. The CEO tried multiple avenues (email, phone) to answer these questions, but no one ever got back to him. Then, in May the account was closed without warning. Steve filed a complaint, and also a senior manager told him an internal investigation would be launched alongside this – the results of which Lloyds has still not disclosed. This also meant that Canary Media Limited fell behind on repayments for a COVID Bounceback Loan taken out by the previous owners, as Lloyds did not give us a mechanism to make repayments (which were automatically set to come out of the now-closed bank account).
Around the same time, £2.5m in financial support for the planned TV channel was also withdrawn, meaning the project had to be scrapped, and the potential for significant YouTube revenue was lost.
The newspaper project also failed due to the debanking. It had a 20% profit margin baked in, meaning that on a print run of 20,000, profit could have been £100,000 a month. However, nearly 2,000 stockists boycotted it within the first few days, making it unsustainable given the debanking, as the Canary couldn’t pay the weekly costs.
Plus, one of the other outlets Canary Media Limited had taken over was losing £15,000 a month more than Steve was told when the businesses merged. This was due to the loss of a significant donor – a fact that was actively hidden from Canary Media Limited.
In early June, a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) for staff was put in place. The former Head of HR and Pastoral, Nikki Brooker, proposed it and also wrote it. The CEO, Steve Topple, did not propose it, but he supported her and the heads of department (who all agreed) in implementing it. This was due to concerns that business-sensitive information could be published online and used against us.
At the end of June, staff were told of the debanking. The CEO decided to delay telling staff, hoping the situation would be resolved and to avoid unnecessary distress. This didn’t end up being the case. Staff were paid three days late, obviously because the Canary didn’t have access to any of its money and had to get emergency funding elsewhere.
During this time, staff had regular meetings where they could provide feedback on the situation and suggest ideas – and also have space to openly discuss the impact on their mental health and emotional wellbeing.
We sent applications to multiple other banks for business accounts. Despite Canary Media Limited being in existence for over 10 years, and having a clear credit score, NatWest, Revolut, Tide, Nationwide, Virgin Money, Santander, and Barclays all declined to give us an account – with multiple banks citing our “complex business structure”.
We had already secured a basic bank account with ANNA back in late April, due to the doxxing of Steve’s personal details online by a senior Your Party member which could have compromised the Lloyds bank account. However, this account then also asked questions about our ownership structure. Our third-party payment provider, Stripe, asked the same questions. We then got another bank account with Monzo.
In July, Israel attacked two of our journalists with grenades in southern Lebanon.
At the end of July, we paid most employees on time, with only two paid late because of daily transfer limits on our new bank account.
On 31 July, Canary staff member Hannah Sharland set up a WhatsApp group called “Everything is Fucked”. This group ran at the same time as a National Union of Journalists (NUJ) union chapel was being created. In hindsight, and from the full chat history, it is clear this group was used to attempt a coup against Steve.
Steve and his now-wife Nicola Jeffery got married on Wednesday 5 August. During this time, two senior staff members attempted to access the CEO’s private emails without his authorisation. One of them also attempted to get Steve to (in their words) “relinquish his duties”. They claimed it was because he was on indefinite mental health leave. This was not true. It was explained to this individual (by Steve and after Nicola had a conversation with them) that we were logging the annual leave he was taking for his wedding as mental health leave, to make sure that he was not contacted during this time. Steve also told this individual that he would be back, as planned, the week after his wedding.
It also transpired that senior staff covertly arranged a meeting with a donor during the week of Steve and Nicola’s wedding, seemingly to oust Steve. However, this did not go according to plan, as conversations in the WhatsApp group show.
Also during the same week, another senior staff member held a meeting with all staff where they told them to start looking for new jobs and said they didn’t know if the company had any money, even though the meeting was only supposed to be about a consultation on new policies. When asked for a recording of this meeting, the senior staff member claimed the file had been “corrupted”.
For context, in the WhatsApp group “Everything is Fucked”, multiple staff members attended Steve and Nicola’s wedding, some even staying at the venue for two nights. This included Hannah Sharland, one of Nicola’s bridesmaids, as they had been good friends for years. Yet these individuals spent the day feeding back rude, insulting messages to the WhatsApp group. Not least among these was Sharland herself, whom journalist HG (a pseudonym) told should have taken “nunchucks” to the wedding. All the while, these individuals were being lovely to Steve and Nicola’s faces.
Steve informed the entire team on Saturday 8 August that he would be back to work on Tuesday 11 August.
On Monday 10 August, a senior staff member announced new policies would go live at 9am on Tuesday 11 August. This was without Steve’s final sign-off. One of these was the Disciplinary Policy, which included a clause that would have meant the CEO could not conduct a disciplinary investigation if the alleged misconduct involved the CEO. That is, Steve could not have disciplined two senior staff members for attempting to access his emails without authorisation.
On 11 August, Steve suspended one of the senior staff members who attempted to access his emails. The other one involved had already gone on “indefinite” sick leave a few days before this. Another senior staff member was also suspended after it transpired they told a former employee that the CEO “was no longer working in the business” (which was not true) during the week of the wedding. Another senior staff member was also immediately removed from the business because the Home Office refused to grant Canary Media Limited a sponsorship licence to get them a work visa.
As soon as the two senior staff members were suspended, the WhatsApp chat immediately began undermining the disciplinary process by holding a Zoom call and helping them both with their stories. This breached standard suspension terms, which state that suspended staff members are not supposed to communicate with other employees. The senior staff member who had no work visa was also still in this group, despite her employment having been terminated.
Also, in Zoom meetings and/or in the chat, staff were openly discussing forging documents from Lloyds Bank to make out Canary Media Limited had not been debanked. There was also open discussion around setting up a social media account to leak internal information. Plus, a senior member of staff was briefing a freelancer on the situation while suspended – which resulted in the latter’s contract being terminated after they misused a group chat to throw abuse at the CEO and team members.
In summary, it appeared some staff were attempting a coup against Steve Topple, subverting official trade union processes, and using lies and defamation to drag staff along. Staff members have since said senior staff had been undermining Steve to them since at least June.
On 19 August, the NUJ union group officially launched without inviting all staff members but fast-tracking membership for a suspended staff member; yet the WhatsApp group continued and operated separately. Two suspended individuals were members of the trade union Signal group chat, despite being suspended – once again breaching standard employment conditions.
The NUJ group quickly descended into chaos and in-fighting. The person leading it resigned from the company nine days later, and the NUJ group was paused. This came after concerned staff members leaked the entire chat to the CEO. An NUJ rep said that in their 40 years in trade union work, they had never seen staff behaviour like it. It has since become apparent that those sowing discord in the NUJ chapel were also members of the “Everything is Fucked” WhatsApp group.
Then, towards the end of August, after Lloyds sent us a cheque for the balance from the debanked account, another Canary Media Limited bank account was locked, holding a significant amount of our funds. Metro explained that this was due to the “complex business structure” related to a change in ownership. For context, a bank manager told Steve this in person, in-branch.
At the end of August, Steve’s mum (who lives with severe dementia in a care home 100 miles from where he lives) had a serious fall, broke her hip, and was in hospital. This meant Steve was travelling backwards and forwards to be there. Yet the Everything is Fucked WhatsApp group poured scorn on this – with journalist Joe Glenton saying Steve was “lying” about it.
Meanwhile, Companies House changed Canary Media Limited’s registered office address to the default one without warning. This meant the company could have been struck off. Our registered office provider confirmed our address was active and valid. Therefore, the legal advice we received was that someone else must have acted maliciously and told Companies House we did not have permission to use the address. However, it seems Companies House did this itself when it got “returned mail” from our address. Yet that still doesn’t make sense, as our address had been active consistently and there would be no reason for mail to be returned.
Also, at the end of August, staff from the WhatsApp group leaked information to the Guardian, which then published an article about internal matters on 4 September. On the same day, some of these staff set up a “Canary Staff” X account, seemingly intending to bring down the company, the CEO, and his wife. Before this, on 3 September, Steve learned of the “Everything is Fucked” WhatsApp group and was given the entire chat history. After revealing this to the team on 5 September, multiple staff members who were active members resigned.
On 8 September, the same staff running the X account spoke to the Telegraph, which then also published an article.
During this time, the process with the NUJ had all but collapsed. The union rep was close to ending the association with the Canary because of staff behaviour, namely suspended members subverting the disciplinary process, leaking information, and some staff’s general unwillingness to engage constructively.
During this time, the “Canary Staff” X account was not only publishing unfounded allegations about, and abuse and harassment aimed at, Steve Topple, but also his wife Nicola Jeffery and other members of staff. To be clear: none of the team are antisemitic; no allegations of sexual harassment have ever been raised; issues around staff members’ conduct are being wholly misrepresented, and the insults thrown at Nicola, and the inferences around her pay and competency, are vicious and unwarranted.
Meanwhile, Lloyds Bank issued a £4,500 compensation cheque for closing Canary Media Limited’s bank account without warning. However, it claimed it had also sent a separate letter detailing its response to Steve’s complaint, but this letter was never received. At the same time, it was also still charging the monthly fee for the business bank account which no longer existed.
The co-ordinated campaign both online (and internally) by former staff and in the corporate media led to donors who had previously offered support to the Canary withdrawing that support – leaving the business unsustainable.
On Wednesday 16 September, the company decided to make remaining staff redundant after a 30-day consultation. This finished on Friday 16 October. On Monday 19 October, the company publicly announced it was stopping operations indefinitely. Meanwhile, staff from the WhatsApp group were still accessing internal Canary systems, despite no longer working at the business.
Featured image via the Canary
By The Canary
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