On the ground floor of 121 Bloor Street East, Dawna Friesen and Tom Clark are hosting a live panel: big screens with “Decision Canada” and “Global News” behind them, three cameras in front of them. Down the hall in a back room, 20 or so analysts are calmly watching over computers as polling data and election results are updated every couple of minutes. A couple of floors up, social media — Twitter, to be exact – is having a party.

This year, Global News and Twitter Canada partnered exclusively to bring real-time, in-depth coverage of Canada’s election night for online and broadcast audiences.  This partnership was unique for two reasons. First, there was an in-house team from Twitter Canada using data visualization technology to analyze live social media reactions.

This allowed on-site journalists like Global News’ Nicole Bogart to turn to the Twitter guys in the room and tell them that the hashtag #RockTheIndigenousVote was increasingly appearing on her Twitter feed because the minister of agriculture lost his seat and she needed data on it. The in-house Twitter team can then produce a cool chart for her to use in her online story.

Second, there was a Twitter-centric party, which is like every other party, except live-tweeting is encouraged.

The idea was to combine the election experience of Global News journalists with the immediacy of Twitter. Considering that over 6 million election-related Tweets were sent out over the past two-and-a-half months, it seemed reasonable to find the online conversation trends and chatter and put it into the context of the election to create what I’ve dubbed the “virtual streetcar” effect.

There were more than 4x as many Tweets sent about #elxn42 in 2015 than there were about #elxn41 in 2011 #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/2nnebN9npL

— Twitter Canada (@TwitterCanada) October 20, 2015

News organizations are capable of doing all of this on their own, according to Steve Ladurantaye, former journalist and current head of Canadian news and government partnerships for Twitter Canada. Wanting more of the best on-screen visualizations for the widest possible audience in the face of an under-staffed and under-resourced newsroom leads to partnerships like this one.

None of this is new information. Global News was merely practicing more closely what everyone knew about the importance of social media. The average person’s reactions as well as the pundit’s and the expert’s commentary didn’t have to be sought on the streets when they could be found at the fingertips.

However, the usefulness of the inclusion of social media in election coverage remains in doubt, as will be evident by the many articles on the subject today, including this one. When Global News’ decision desk declared a Liberal majority government around 9:40 p.m.,  everyone at the party tweeted out their Justin Trudeau graphic and then cheered, and Bogart quickly posted how social media reacted soon after.

On one hand, the inclusion of tweets from online platforms in newspapers and broadcasts has meant that the virtual streetcar effect is working. Yet is this is at the risk of too much chatter? At one point in the night, I watched Mike Armstrong’s TweetDeck column for #elxn42 updating every second, so fast that the tweets were illegible, making it a literal “stream” of information. “It’s just noise at this point,” said Armstrong, the anchor-host of the Global News #elxn42party. Except that for the in-house Twitter guys, it was data to collect.

Election coverage is layered, nuanced and complex, but it’s also calm — or at least it seems so on the surface (unless something unpredictable happens). Social media is the opposite of that: it’s fast and it’s wild. How do you find the voice of the crowd among the millions of voices in the crowd?

Perhaps figuring that out was why Global News formed a partnership with Twitter Canada for #elxn42.

Scrolling through Twitter one afternoon last September, I came across an account that stood out in an alarming way. “In Iraq killing Shias, etc.,” said the bio of @MuhajirSomali, a supposed Canadian member of ISIS. While I don’t know what he meant by “etc.,” he certainly was claiming he was in Iraq killing Shias and others. His posts were terrifying and I wanted to break the news, so I took a screenshot of his bio. On my Twitter feed I posted: “The #Canadian ISIS member says on his bio on Twitter that he is in #Iraq to kill Shias. #ISIS #NO2ISIS #Canada.” I attached the screenshot as evidence to tell my more than 4,000 followers what this fighter said he was doing in Iraq.

At that time, @MuhajirSomali had fewer than 500 followers on Twitter. My post would amplify his message. But I am far from the only journalist to draw attention to the purported activities of ISIS online. The shocking nature of these posts makes them difficult to ignore.

@MuhajirSomali, along with a second Twitter handle @muhajirsumalee (both now suspended), allegedly belonged to Farah Mohamed Shirdon, a Somali-Canadian from Calgary in his early twenties. He first appeared in a viral April 2014 video, in which he and other foreign fighters burned their passports in a campfire while chanting, “Allah is great” in Arabic. Their threat to North Americans was explicit: “We are coming to you and we will destroy you with Allah’s permission. . . . With Allah’s permission we came to you with slaughter.”

ISIS has become infamous over the past year for its massacres and kidnappings in Iraq and Syria. The extremist group has been fighting a parallel propaganda war on social media. ISIS members use platforms including Twitter, YouTube and Facebook to send their messages and aim for videos of beheadings and other hateful acts to go viral.

The chilling videos showing the beheadings of journalists James Foley, Steven Sotloff and Kenji Goto make another message clear: reporters who go to conflict zones in Iraq and Syria are risking their lives. This makes finding local sources and conducting firsthand research challenging. Without on-the-ground sources, it is tempting for journalists to lean on social media, seeking out users who claim to be ISIS members.

Individual news organizations must decide if and how to use these sources, but the risks in doing so are great. It’s a difficult task to verify that these people are who they claim to be and it’s easy for those reporting on the online activities of ISIS to get the story wrong. Worse, when journalists reproduce social media messages by anonymous ISIS sources without adequate context, they can sensationalize the story, playing into the hands of those who want to spread fear.

***

A decade ago, I went to Iraq. My parents were born and raised there, and I wanted to see the places of their childhood memories. While they had lived there under a dictatorship, the situation during my visit was even more volatile. Sectarian violence, kidnappings, assassinations and car bombs emptied whole neighbourhoods of Baghdad. Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants, other armed groups and militias caused chaos and fear, disrupting lives in an attempt to enforce a fundamentalist understanding of Islam. At this time, ISIS was still allied with Osama bin Laden and known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).

Black banners mourning the deaths of young men and women flew all over the city. Two years after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, I sat on the pavement under the blazing August sun in Baghdad, a witness to a mortar attack that targeted civilians. The ground underneath my feet shook and the sound pierced my ears. A few minutes later, a child rushed to her mother. “I saw their slippers soaked in blood. There were pieces of flesh,” the crying girl said. Unlike most who lived there, I was witnessing such a horrific scene for the first time.

A year after my visit, AQI renamed itself ISI, adding the “S” in 2013 for al-Sham, the Arabic name for Syria, to reflect its cross-border territories. In northern Iraq, ISIS seized control of the cities of Fallujah and Mosul in its brutal campaign to control the Muslim world. The group targets Iraq’s Shia majority and leaves a humanitarian crisis in its wake. Last spring, around the same time Al-Qaeda severed ties with the group, ISIS dropped the geographically specific part of its name, rebranding as Islamic State to reflect its heightened ambitions.

In its current campaign, ISIS has become adept at using social media to build a fearsome brand and has recruited young men and women from different parts of the world, including Canada. Ten years ago, militants recorded video and audio and sent it to mainstream news outlets in hopes of getting airtime. Today, they have direct access to an audience through platforms including Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to boast about acts of brutality and make threats.

Sometimes their messages are worth reporting—it would have been difficult to ignore the graphic beheadings and mass executions, or the kidnappings of thousands of Yazidi women and children. But there’s an ethical dilemma: does the coverage serve ISIS propaganda designed to terrorize people?

 ***

Stewart Bell, a senior reporter specializing in foreign affairs and national security for the National Post, frequently covers foreign fighters, especially those who join extremist groups. In his Twitter bio, he describes himself as a “journalist and author who writes about Canadians who do stupid things in the name of their causes.” Currently, many of his subjects are ISIS members or supporters, and Bell uses Twitter a lot—tweeting, retweeting and reporting on the posts from those claiming to be ISIS members. Authorities estimate that over 100 Canadians are fighting in Iraq and Syria, though not all are supporting ISIS.

On September 16, 2014, the Post published a front-page story by Bell with the headline, “Unmasked Canadian Jihadist Tweets His Deadly Ideology.” Online, it was even more succinct: “Canadian Jihadist Unmasked.” The story revealed the identity of Abu Turaab, who had been tweeting threats and exhorting people to join the fight in Syria from the handle @AbuTuraab. “While he has been careful not to reveal his real identity, posting only photos of himself wearing ski goggles or with a scarf covering his face,” wrote Bell, “the National Post has learned he is a 23-year-old Canadian citizen named Mohammed Ali.”

The article, illustrated with images pulled from Twitter, addressed the phenomenon of Canadians travelling to Syria to fight for ISIS, and built a profile of Abu Turaab through his Twitter posts. They included an exchange following Foley’s execution in which he threatened Bell: “I wonder how my homie
@StewartBellNP feels after watching the latest IS video?”

The article didn’t say how the Post confirmed the identity behind @AbuTuraab. As a reader, I was left with an article based on Twitter posts of someone who is allegedly a terrorist. To me, Abu Turaab remains an anonymous source since he doesn’t publicly reveal his identity. There is no way to ensure it’s Mohammed Ali posting and not someone pretending to be him.

Bell doesn’t see it this way. I have been following his reporting on ISIS and I have one main concern: it’s too easy to pretend to be someone else online. Consider the supposed Syrian blogger behind Gay Girl in Damascus from a few years back who turned out to be an American man studying in Scotland. In a more recent incident, Indian authorities arrested 24-year-old engineering student Mehdi Masroor Biswas, who was running the pro-ISIS Twitter account @ShamiWitness. Biswas had more than 17,000 followers (including jihadists), a following cultivated from his home in India.

When I meet with Bell to discuss his use of ISIS Twitter accounts, he tells me social media offers insight into the minds of those who travel to Iraq and Syria to fight. “This is the first conflict where journalists have been able to follow people who have gone to participate,” he says. “And this allows us to identify who they are, where they are, what they are, what they are seeing and also their thinking, their justification for doing what they are doing.”

He acknowledges identities can be manipulated online, but believes verification of certain ISIS fighters is possible. “Most of the ones that are very active on social media, with few exceptions, they don’t want you to know who they really are,” he says, admitting that it’s challenging to identify someone when they don’t post photos showing their face. “When somebody does that and they go overseas, then inevitably there are people here who know who they really are.”

Still, there’s no way to ensure it’s always the same person posting from a Twitter account. Abu Turaab changed his Twitter accounts as each one was suspended, making his trail difficult to follow. (The threatening nature of ISIS accounts violates Twitter’s terms of service, so they are routinely shut down.) If Abu Turaab and others are misidentified, the whole story could be wrong.

Bell says he verifies information from a Twitter source such as Abu Turaab before publishing by doing traditional reporting, speaking to people who know about him or his activities. But Canadian journalists have been wrong before. In August 2014, several journalists reported the death of Canadian-born jihadist Shirdon based on social media posts of ISIS members or supporters. On August 15, 2014, a Post headline declared: “Farah Mohamed Shirdon, Calgary ISIS Fighter Reportedly Killed in Iraq, was ‘Dead Inside’ Long Ago, Friend Says.” CBC reported the same story: “Farah Mohamed Shirdon of Calgary, Fighting for ISIS, Dead in Iraq, Reports Say.” As did The Calgary Sun: “City Radical Dies in Iraq—Third Young Calgarian Killed Fighting with Extremists.” A month later, Shirdon was resurrected in a Skype interview with VICE Media co-founder and CEO Shane Smith. In a room with other combatants, Shirdon claimed he was in Mosul alongside 10,000 to 15,000 fighters. He added that he was motivated by the Qu’ran, rather than a recruiter. Throughout the interview, Shirdon maintained his smile. To me, it seemed like a wicked, mischievous expression suggesting those who believed his death were fools.

Verification is a foundational principle of journalism, and news organizations lose credibility when they get stories wrong. Craig Silverman, author of Regret the Error and an expert in journalistic accuracy, says reporting unverified news lends authority to an idea that may or may not be true. Even when news organizations use hedge language in reporting on a rumour, he says, they provide it with wider distribution and an element of credibility. The boundary between fact and fiction becomes blurred.

On June 23, 2014, Shirdon appeared in an article on VICE’s science and technology vertical Motherboard. Benjamin Makuch, an editor with a history of engaging with ISIS sources online, wrote the piece. He believes verification can be achieved by reporting and correlating social media accounts—many militants are on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter—though they remain essentially anonymous. “You have to go with the best information you have available,” he says.

Even when their identities cannot be verified, messages from ISIS present problems. Makuch believes pursuing these stories is worthwhile because ISIS is inherently newsworthy, even if its motive is to disseminate propaganda. He cites the example of the news of Foley’s beheading, which originated from ISIS social media posts. “You can’t actually question the news value of something like that,” says Makuch. As a journalist, he would report on the “horrifying image” because “it needs to be known.”

VICE’s willingness to publish Shirdon’s viewpoint provides an uncritical platform for the sensational messages of ISIS. When the Foley video first circulated online, a headline I saw on the Toronto Star website—“Foley Execution Video Going Viral Is Exactly What ISIS Wants”—summed up what I was thinking.

The more people share videos of beheadings, the wider the spread of ISIS’s threat. Louie Palu, a Canadian documentary photographer and photojournalist who has worked in Afghanistan, says he is reluctant to go to Syria. It’s not the fear of death, but the possibility of being kidnapped and used by militant groups that makes it dangerous.

He is repulsed by the spread of the beheading videos. “It is like video terrorism,” Palu says. “If they can’t terrorize us by doing a car bomb in our city, they’ll send a video saying, ‘We’ll cut your heads off.’”

Susan Sachs, foreign editor at The Globe and Mail, says her newspaper does not post videos or stills of beheadings or any other horrific killings. Her reason is straightforward: “We don’t provide a platform for anyone, whatever group they are, to put out their propaganda.” CBCNews.ca features writer Andre Mayer doesn’t use ISIS Twitter posts as sources, though he may refer to them during research. “[Twitter posts] are 140 characters, so you aren’t getting a lot,” he says. “You don’t know the person behind any given tweet, really.” Mayer’s sources instead are analysts, institutions and universities because he believes they offer more credibility and sophistication.

Including a range of Muslim voices, rather than focusing on the tweets of extremists, can provide less sensational and more nuanced reporting. Religion is an important issue to address, since ISIS members claim to be following teachings of the Qu’ran.

Imam Syed Soharwardy, founder of the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada, routinely speaks to reporters about the diversity of Islam. He points out that ISIS members belong to the fringe Wahabi sect. “These terrorists should not be identified as Muslims. They should be identified with their sects,” says
Soharwardy. “Do not associate that person with the religion of 1.6 billion people.” A reader with no knowledge of Islam may not necessarily understand the difference between a fanatic who commits crimes in the name of religion and the rest of the Muslim population. Sensational coverage has the effect of promoting an insidious form of Islamophobia.

On the more fundamental question of ethics in reporting on ISIS’s threats and boasts on social media, I spoke with Jeffrey Dvorkin, director of the journalism program at University of Toronto Scarborough. Dvorkin counsels extreme caution in reporting on the online activities of ISIS. “There is a very fine line between giving an organization publicity and hearing their point of view in order for the audience to understand what the organization is about,” he says. “A journalist’s obligation is to make those difficult choices to help the audience understand who these people are without necessarily giving them a free ride.”

Journalists risk crossing the “fine line” when reporting on atrocities that could be labelled as war crimes. Broadcasting an unedited video or post and giving the perpetrators the chance to talk about it amplifies their message. Context is crucial, says Dvorkin: “It is possible, I think, under certain circumstances, to report on stories overseas from Canada, but with a warning that some of the information can not be verified.”

***

Reporting on what ISIS members do without being their mouthpiece is challenging—even according to readers. On September 29, 2014, the Post published on its letters page responses to the question “Should the media be reporting on what jihadists are posting on social media?” The replies varied: “The public has the right to know”; “The media is giving them what they want”; “It depends.” The same discussion goes on in newsrooms as journalists try to figure out what to report and what not to report.

ISIS’s weapons on the ground are guns, bombs and mortars, but social media is its conduit to the rest of the world—a tool for spreading fear and recruiting new members. It’s also, unfortunately, one of the few windows available to North American journalists looking to understand what’s happening in Iraq and Syria. But it offers a distorted view of the conflict, mediated through the self-
interest of the aggressors—a necessary fact to keep in mind when making decisions about if and how to report on social media messages from ISIS.

“There is a great value in being on the scene and being a reporter and witnessing events firsthand, even though it’s extremely dangerous,” says Dvorkin, pointing out how little we know about ISIS beyond the violent headlines. But that may not be a good reflection of reality on the ground. “If we are trying to understand them, we need to do more than report on what they are tweeting.”

Art courtesy Chris Tucker

By Rhiannon Russell

Waubgeshig Rice pulls his van over and darts onto the street, video camera hoisted on his shoulder. Dressed in a CBC/Radio-Canada coat and heavy-duty boots, he’s covering the second national day of action for Idle No More, an indigenous rights movement. It’s a miserable day for a protest: below zero, snow swirling in thick, fluffy flakes, downtown streets a slushy lagoon. The wind pelts exposed bits of skin. But the protesters march, drum, and dance toward Parliament Hill, and Rice, an Ojibwa video journalist at CBC Ottawa, is in his element—despite the elements. Since moving here two years ago, he’s immersed himself in the city’s Aboriginal community, attending powwows and other events. As Rice keeps ahead of the pack, there is a call. “Is that Waub?” Later, another, more personal: “Hey, cousin!” He is familiar with the people and the issue. That afternoon, during a live hit outside Parliament for CBC News Network, anchor Asha Tomlinson changes direction from the standard questions to ask Rice: Does he think Idle No More can sustain itself?

When we trudge back to the newsroom, my boots and socks sopping wet, Rice tells me her question was unusual. As a reporter, he doesn’t give opinions on the news. Today was different, he thinks, because of his essay about Idle No More, posted to CBC.ca this morning. “Modern history is largely defined by the faces of the people who make it,” he wrote. “When we think of the Oka crisis of 1990, we all think of that one shot of the warrior and the soldier, which instilled pride in so many First Nations people across the country. That same potential is here. This time, there are thousands more people from all First Nations willing to put their faces on history.”

But Rice’s understanding of the story is unusual, too. Most stories about Idle No More have lacked depth, context, and analysis. Though the grassroots movement is complex, with no appointed leader and various mandates, that doesn’t excuse vague and misinformed coverage. By offering only a play-by-play of protests and blockades, reporters missed the point. A few, including Rice, proved that analytical, thorough coverage is possible. Idle No More demands a change from the political norm, and for Canadian journalists, the norm has long been poor coverage of indigenous people. Sure, you could argue journalists don’t cover any minority as well as they should, but as Mary Agnes Welch, the public policy reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press, told me, natives are the founding people of Canada, and they’re marginalized more than any other group. “I think you could make an argument that we have a treaty obligation to First Nations, and also we have a Canadian obligation because so much of what they’re experiencing is, it’s un-Canadian, frankly.”

I kept my thumb on the Idle No More hashtag from the first national day of protest in December. For more than a month, I lived in an INM media bubble, scouring news websites, newspapers, blogs, and videos, and consuming as much coverage as humanly possible. Idle No More’s trajectory is one worth charting, if for no other reason than the movement started as a Twitter hashtag and grew to be one of the top stories of the year. But it’s also an opportunity to check on the state of Aboriginal coverage.

This is the log of my media diet since the movement became national news.

DECEMBER 10 > Let’s start with the “official” first day, although the #IdleNoMore hashtag first appeared in November, when a Cree woman in Alberta used it to promote an information session on Bill C-45, the federal government’s second omnibus budget bill. First Nations activists are concerned about its contents: changes to the Indian Act and Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Today, the hashtag became more than a call to action—it is action. We saw the first of dozens of protests in major Canadian cities and #IdleNoMore trended on Twitter as people shared photos and updates from rallies.

If this wasn’t enough of a hook, the next day, Theresa Spence, chief of the northern Ontario community of Attawapiskat, started a hunger strike to pressure Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Governor General David Johnston, and First Nations leaders into meeting to discuss treaty rights. Neither the protests nor the hunger strike received national mainstream coverage, save for articles on The Globe and Mail website  and The Huffington Post Canada. Even local coverage was patchy. Only Aboriginal Peoples Television Network covered the rallies all day, posting videos and stories to its Facebook and Twitter accounts and putting the events at the top of its nightly newscast.

Unimpressed, Aboriginal people took to Twitter to lament the void. “There is a media bias,” tweeted Wab Kinew, a former CBC journalist who’s now director of indigenous inclusion at the University of Winnipeg. “Any other group of people who brought out as many people in as many cities would have had wall-to-wall coverage.”

Instead, a monkey in a Toronto Ikea dominated headlines. “‘Tens of thousands of Native people turned out for a coordinated, national….Oh, look, a monkey’—the Media,” tweeted one person. Another wrote: “The media isn’t interested in well-behaved native peoples.”

Meanwhile, I had a job interview at a major daily newspaper. In the hours before, I kept an eye on its website for INM coverage. Nothing surfaced. When I pitched a story about the movement in the interview, one editor said it sounded like something they’d assign to a freelancer.

DECEMBER 18 > Idle No More finally made CBC’s The National tonight with a story on how Spence’s hunger strike is “part of a wider movement.” It’s thorough—Adrienne Arsenault also reported on the protests, the crucial social media component, and the controversial legislation. She concluded with a reference to the second wave of rallies planned for December 21: “If the turnout is what they suggest it will be and hope it will be, then it’s possible that this might just be the beginning of something.”

Back when I first talked to Rice, in October, before INM, he foreshadowed the movement by crediting social media as a way for Aboriginal people to unify. “A lot of younger people are a lot more aware, and they’re able to share their stories to a greater degree, and maybe influence other news organizations and bring some issues to light from a grassroots level,” Rice said. He recalls seeing tweets in INM’s early days about how the movement didn’t need the mainstream media to spread its message. “Well, you kind of do,” he said, adding that Twitter runs the risk of being an echo chamber.

If you want widespread attention, you need the mainstream media, and in the following week, Idle No More started earning more space in local newspapers and broadcasts, thanks to regional protests. Still, Duncan McCue, an Ojibwa reporter for The National and journalism professor at the University of British Columbia, said reporters mistook the groundswell for isolated gatherings. “That there was something national going on. Didn’t get it. Perhaps didn’t care. Perhaps were heading on holidays. All three of those things combined, and unfortunately, there wasn’t as much coverage as there could have been.”

DECEMBER 21 > Today, I travelled to Ottawa for the largest rally yet. Protesters met on Victoria Island—traditional Algonquin land and Spence’s home during her hunger strike—before marching to Parliament Hill. On the plane, I made the mistake of telling my seatmate, a pompous businessman, where I was headed. He hadn’t heard of Idle No More, and for the remainder of the flight—only an hour, phew—he ranted about “those corrupt Indian chiefs who steal money from the government.” That, he said, is what he sees in the media.

So far, there has been little reportage from First Nations communities. The problems on many reserves—poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, suicide, and violence—have been covered before, but with INM, everything is on the table (unlike, say, Attawapiskat, where housing and poverty were the issues, and Oka or Ipperwash, which were about land). Of course, coverage of squalor on reserves can perpetuate the stereotype of the poor, lazy native if journalists don’t balance those drastic, yet important, stories with more positive ones.

Over the Christmas break, Idle No More thrived with rallies, blockades, and solidarity hunger strikes, but so did the stereotypes. Journalists covered these events as they always had—with photos and videos of natives adorned with feathers and buckskin, dancing, chanting, and pounding drums. Though this is undeniably a facet of Aboriginal culture, most reporters didn’t dig below the surface of the image or sound bite. “Journalists just love this stuff,” theOttawa Citizen’s Terry Glavin later wrote. “It means you don’t actually have to do any work.”

JANUARY 7 > Early January was a whirlwind. A judge ordered the Ontario Provincial Police to remove protesters blocking railway tracks near Sarnia. Harper agreed to meet with First Nations leaders, including Spence. Just three days later, an audit commissioned by Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada leaked to CBC. The Deloitte audit investigated Attawapiskat finances between 2005 and 2011, finding that 81 percent of examined transactions had inadequate documentation; 60 percent had none. The Globe headline—“Attawapiskat Audit Raises Questions About Millions in Spending”—was typical. But the audit also showed accounting practices had improved after Spence became chief in 2010, so APTN reporter Kenneth Jackson tweeted: “My lede would have been: Serious financial problems on Attawapiskat but improved under Chief Theresa Spence audit indicates.”

The story reinforced the stereotype of the fat-cat chief with money-lined pockets. On The Huffington Post Canada, journalist Yoni Goldstein argued that reserve “hellholes” are the fault of leaders such as Spence. “How is it possible that native leaders have managed to squander…millions of dollars federal and provincial governments keep handing over, year after year?” he wrote. These commentaries undermined the quality of discussion. In a letter to Vancouver Island’s Comox Valley Echo, John Logan wrote that Spence’s position as a symbol for Aboriginal people was a “sham.” Spence attended a residential school as a child, but the scathing critiques lacked this context. In fact, she is a credible symbol: she knows the history of Aboriginal people because she’s lived it. The Telegram in St. John’s was the only news outlet I found to mention this.

Never mind that Spence wasn’t even tied to Idle No More. Her fast just happened to coincide with INM’s kickoff—something many reporters confused. For instance, at the Assembly of First Nations presser in Ottawa on January 10, David Akin, Sun Media’s national bureau chief, asked AFN chief Shawn Atleo if it was acceptable that Attawapiskat police kicked out a reporter. “The Attawapiskat angle was so much more tabloid-friendly than history,” wrote Michael Harris on iPolitics. “It was character assassination by dull razor blade.”

In the days leading up to the meeting with Prime Minister Harper, journalists capitalized on so-called cracks in INM’s armour, as some provincial chiefs opted out of the meeting for fear it would amount to no more than a photo op. A Globe headline sounded ominous: “Idle No More Protests Beyond Control of Chiefs.”

The possibility of violence was a popular topic. In the National Post, Kent Roach and David Schneiderman, University of Toronto law professors, arguedthat police were right to be cautious about the protesters. Because, you know, those violent natives. And in the Globe, John Ibbitson patted the government on the back: “Thus far, the Conservatives have gotten the big things right, by ignoring peaceful demonstrations and engaging with the responsible leadership in order to marginalize extremists. But that is exactly the moment at which events can spiral out of control: Oka; the Dudley George shooting. Then no one can predict what will happen.”

In the same vein, John Ivison wrote in the Post: “Despite the posters proclaiming ‘zero tolerance to all forms of violence,’ the guys barring the gate did not look they’d [sic] be dogmatic about the principle. ‘Friend or foe?’ growled one to a native girl who was looking to gain access.” As if growling signals imminent bloodshed.

JANUARY 14 > Small-town Manitoba weekly the Morris Mirror caused an uproar with an editorial claiming Aboriginal people were acting like terrorists. “Indians/Natives want it all but corruption and laziness prevent some of them from working for it,” wrote editor Reed Turcotte beside an editorial cartoon of a native person making smoke signals, with this caption: “Before they were partially wiped out by white men’s diseases, the Canadian Indian had a highly evolved society built around the world’s first cell phone.” Media outlets across Canada ran this story. The Mirror later ran an apology, but maintained “we stand by the fact that the Natives must work to get out of their situation.”

And in a Cowichan News Leader op-ed, Patrick Hrushowy, president of the Cowichan Valley constituency association of the B.C. Liberal Party, wrote of provincial chiefs issuing “thundering calls for ‘warriors’ to prepare to take the fight to the streets. All of this scares me…I pass someone on the street and wonder if this is one of the ‘warriors’ who wants to put my livelihood at risk to achieve his or her demands.”

Meanwhile, APTN reported on a Sun News poll asking readers to describe Spence in one word to win a prize: “Some of the words used included: fat, oink, garbage, chief two-chins and hippo. Others couldn’t stick to just one word. One wrote, ‘Stop sucking Lysol.’” This type of discourse prompted Idle No More supporters to protest outside Sun offices in three cities. At a Toronto INM rally, I watched a man accost a Sun News cameraperson, throw his hand in front of the lens, and lecture him about the network’s “agenda.”

On social media, things were even more heated. Manitoba’s Thompson Citizen shut down its Facebook page due to an onslaught of anti-native comments. And a tweet from Ivison a few weeks earlier—“It seems there are certain native leaders intent on conflict; who want hapless Theresa Spence to become a martyr. God forbid that happens”—sicced the attack dogs. Gerald Taiaiake Alfred, a professor at the University of Victoria, called Ivison a “racist prick” and threatened to kick his “immigrant ass” back to Scotland if he disrespected Spence again.

Several pundits seemed intent on discrediting INM and disparaging Aboriginal people. “While Chief Spence, and others, may long for ‘nation-to-nation discussions,’ there is I think a genuine question as to whether there’s enough of Aboriginal culture that has survived to even dream of that lofty status,” wrote Post columnist Christie Blatchford. “Smudging, drumming and the like do not a nation make.” The Globe’s Jeffrey Simpson ridiculed the desire for sovereignty: “But too many communities remain within the dream palace, hungering for a return to a more separate existence, even if the lands on which they sit are—and likely always will be-—of marginal economic value.” He didn’t mention that these communities were relegated to marginal land years ago so the government could harvest natural resources.

Barbara Kay, also of the Post, trivialized Spence’s fast, suggesting she was merely “detoxing” to lose weight (she was consuming fish broth, after all) and criticized her for a diet that probably includes “a lot of carbohydrates.” Spence’s hunger strike was media fodder for all its 44 days. First, it was just that—a “hunger strike.” Then, it became a “liquid diet” or “liquid fast,” though Spence was open about her consumption of water and fish broth early on. A story on Globalnews.ca before she ended her hunger strike read, “It is not known just how many calories Spence is ingesting, subsisting on fish broth and medicinal teas (a true hunger striker drinks only water).” The Post called her wise for drinking fish broth to preserve her strength, as though this were a sneaky tactic to fast without really fasting.

Fish broth actually has special significance. In a Huffington Post Canada editorial, Leanne Simpson wrote that her ancestors survived on fish broth during the winters because, once their land was colonized, it was their only sustenance. “It carries cultural meaning for Anishinaabeg,” she wrote. “It symbolizes hardship and sacrifice. It 
symbolizes the strength of our ancestors. It means 
survival.”

JANUARY 17 > Protests and blockades took over the roads today, and a Canadian Press and Postmedia story discussed these events: “Some groups spoke of their own land claims, others decried the federal government’s changes to environmental oversight. Still others spoke of the need to honour all First Nations treaties.” That the movement wasn’t monolithic was one of the major difficulties for journalists.

I can guess what you’re thinking: it’s easy for me, a 21-year-old student, to pick apart professionals. Really, though, I do see the abundant challenges. First of all, Idle No More is grassroots with no appointed leader, so reporters don’t know who has authority to speak about it. Second, although some complained journalists were slow to cover INM, the Post’s Tristin Hopper pointed out the wisdom of waiting to see if a movement has legs. “We can’t write about a hashtag. We’ll just look like clowns.” And journalists are often wary of covering hunger strikes for the same reason they are of suicides—fear of encouraging them.

INM also challenges the country’s colonial history and it’s impossible to provide that context in two minutes or 600 words, said McCue. Journalists attempted to cover this history with one line or a short paragraph, buried as the inverted pyramid model dictates. This perpetuated the idea that INM was disorganized and vague, even after organizers identified specifically what they were fighting for.

I also understand the news cycle and what Rice called the curse of daily news. “There’s not that much opportunity to really offer context,” he said. “You’re only skimming the surface.” I can see that all a tight deadline allows for is a recap of that day’s protest, and not a dissection of the issues. Also tricky: Canada is home to 50 or so First Nations and more than 600 native communities. As Peter Edwards, a Star reporter who covered Ipperwash in 1995, wrote in his book One Dead Indian, “It was all a confusing jumble for the media, who like things in tidy packages….” With millions of Aboriginal people across Canada, there are no “tidy packages,” which made it difficult for reporters to suss out the majority’s sentiments. But, as Hayden King, an Anishinaabe politics assistant professor at Ryerson University, wrote in the Globe, “Recent attempts to interpret the Idle No More movement has resulted in conclusions of sudden divisions, fracturing and ‘chiefs losing control.’” These divisions, though, are normal and have always existed, just as they do in Canadian politics.

INM was also tough because its message evolved. In the early days, supporters fought against Bill C-45, but gradually, their desires grew to include treaty rights, nation-to-nation discussion, and an improved relationship with the federal government. These issues aren’t easy to sum up in a couple of sentences.

Spence complicated things. When, throughout January, she waffled on her demands, it was undoubtedly confusing. Of course, reporting is difficult when you’re physically removed from the story: Spence supporters escorted Star reporter Joanna Smith from the Victoria Island enclosure and police kicked a Global News team out of Attawapiskat.
But journalists have long struggled with covering native issues. As the Royal Commission Report on Aboriginal Peoples found in 1996: “Many Canadians know Aboriginal people only as noble environmentalists, angry warriors or pitiful victims. A full picture of their humanity is simply not available in the media.”

Thanks to this relationship, many indigenous people distrust reporters, which in turn can further discourage non-native journalists from wading into the deep waters of Aboriginal affairs. It’s a vicious cycle. As Susan Gamble, a reporter who covers the Six Nations reserve for The Expositor in Brantford, Ontario, said, “There’s a lot of reluctance among some people to switch over to something like that because they feel like it’s a delicate subject. They feel like it’s a tough subject.”

Some INM supporters decried criticism as “racism,” even if the issues raised were legitimate. Accusations of racism are nothing new, but when everyone has a smartphone, racist comments and angry tweets are even easier.

Gamble has experienced this. “If somebody doesn’t like what you write, the natural thing is to accuse you of not understanding the issue because you’re not native or that you’re trying deliberately to do something negative to the natives because you are non-native.”

JANUARY 19 > A revealing, magazine-length feature appeared in the Post today. Jonathan Kay visited four reserves along James Bay, and found most were financially stable. “As we drive through the Fort Albany reserve in Edmund Metatawabin’s pick-up truck, he asks me: ‘Do you see any drunk people. Are all the homes broken down?’ The answer is no — and he wants me to say it,” wrote Kay. “Based on the way the media reports stories from remote fly-in reserves such as Fort Albany, many Canadians have formed the impression that communities such as his are crumbling junkyards full of miserable alcoholics.”

Certain outlets and journalists demonstrated how INM coverage could be better. Both The National and TVO’s The Agenda with Steve Paikin hosted round-table discussions featuring native and non-native experts leading up to the First Nations meeting with Harper. On the former show, Idle No More was the top story each night, with analysis of different angles and guests who included urban Aboriginals and young activists. Reporters venturing to nearby or far-off reserves gleaned context that, although removed from highway blockades and mall round dances, showed a fresh take on the movement.

A week ago, I highlighted a Star story in my notes. “To get lost in the diet particulars of one hunger-striking chief in Ottawa,” wrote Jim Coyle in a well-researched feature, “or the accounting idiosyncracies of one reserve’s band council, or a decision in Attawapiskat by a people grown wary of media to ban a TV crew, is to miss the larger and legitimate point of Idle No More and the opportunity it presents for essential change.”

At the height of the Spence-money-management frenzy, The Gazette in Montreal published a feature about the successful Mohawk community of Kahnawake—a reminder that some reserves are indeed financially stable. Late in January, the Free Press published an INM primer. When did it begin? What is a treaty? Where does the Indian Act fit in? It was an informative read.

APTN’s coverage was consistently good. Reporters Jorge Barrera and Kenneth Jackson—focusing on politics and the “streets,” respectively—committed to dig deep and tell the whole story. “Our job isn’t to defend Spence by any means. If I had that audit, I’d do a story,” said Jackson. “I just would add context. And I think that’s the main role as a reporter—add context wherever you can.”

The journalists I talked to agreed that hiring more Aboriginal people is crucial to improving coverage. “There’s a genuine lack of awareness about a lot of issues that are affecting First Nations people, and until you have more First Nations journalists in the mainstream, I think that that might always be the case,” said Tanya Talaga, an Anishinaabe-Polish reporter at the Star. During INM, some papers commissioned native freelancers to write analysis. But King said newspapers should regularly feature perspectives from native people, not just during crises.

The Strategic Alliance of Broadcasters for Aboriginal Reflection (SABAR), a partnership of mainstream and Aboriginal outlets, encourages the media to hire more native reporters and change how they cover indigenous people. CBC has a stronger record of covering native affairs than most—its TV series 8th Fire, for instance, delves into Canada’s relationship with indigenous people—and it broadcasts in eight Aboriginal languages. But this diversity doesn’t carry over to hiring practices. From January 2003 to March 2012, the number of full-time, permanent Aboriginal employees rose from 1.2 percent to 1.4 percent of the broadcaster’s workforce. (As of 2006, Aboriginal people accounted for 3.8 percent of Canada’s population.)

That’s one of the ideas behind a Journalists for Human Rights program slated to launch later this year in several northern Ontario communities. An organization that usually works with reporters and editors in Third-World countries, JHR will train native journalists in print and radio reporting.

Improving how reporters interact with native people is the goal of McCue’s website, Reporting in Indigenous Communities. The toolkit includes a checklist for visiting a reserve and a terminology guide, compiled by SABAR. Journalism schools should also give students some grounding in Aboriginal issues, because with a growing native population in Canada, most reporters will cover native issues at some point. If media outlets want to get it right (and King believes they genuinely do), they must commit more time to understand history, and avoid centuries-old stereotypes.

On a more basic level, Aboriginal people have to become commonplace in the media. “So if there was just a story about a medical breakthrough and then they interviewed an Aboriginal doctor, and it wasn’t a big deal,” said Kinew. “It wasn’t like, okay, here’s a story about Aboriginal doctors.” Steve Bonspiel was more vocal about reporters resorting to stereotypes: “It’s bullshit,” said the Mohawk editor and publisher of The Eastern Door in Kahnawake, Quebec. “I think they can look at a native story not as a native story, but as a human story.”

Dan David, a Mohawk freelance journalist in nearby Kanehsatake, has a unique take. When I spoke with him last fall, he said the “mainstream media” can seem like such a big, unchangeable entity. “If you had one newspaper just devote its resources to improving its coverage of human rights issues—and that’s what indigenous issues are, they’re human rights issues—then that’s a step in the right direction.”

Yet Kay thinks the main reasons for poor Aboriginal coverage—the cost of travelling to remote communities and lack of reader interest—are out of journalists’ control. “Most Canadians just don’t care that much about First Nations stories, and so the market isn’t there,” he wrote in an email. “The media aren’t going to report on stories that most people don’t care about.”

After the evening newscast on December 21, Rice admitted he was worried about writing that INM analysis piece for CBC.ca. What if his editors saw it as a threat to his objectivity? “Much to my surprise,” he said, “they sort of fed into that and played off it in terms of the coverage, which is kind of cool. I mean, I wasn’t expecting that at all today.” When Rice was a kid, the only time he saw reporters in his Wasauksing, Ontario, community was when things went awry. “I developed a distrust for media very early on. Why are these guys only showing up when something bad here happens? There are so many good things happening in my community.”

Rice first considered a journalism career in high school. “There’s a bridge that really needs to be built there of understanding and awareness,” he said. “I thought, if I can get in there and try to do my part and just do one little story at a time, then I saw that as sort of a success.”

JANUARY 24 > Spence ended her hunger strike today. The media’s sentiment was clearly that INM will fade away as Occupy did—and the fast’s end is certainly the termination of something—but journalists who thought the movement was over clearly didn’t understand it in the first place.

Last week, a poll suggested only 38 percent of Canadians support INM, and 60 percent believe native people’s problems are brought on by themselves (up from 35 percent in 1989). “While most Canadians have likely heard of Idle No More, many Canadians apparently haven’t bothered to properly educate themselves about what exactly it is,” stated a Globalnews.ca article. But have journalists? It’s unrealistic to expect the average Canadian to understand INM, when it’s debatable reporters did.

Journalists missed another chance to cover Aboriginal affairs in a balanced and detailed way. In a guest column for the Cambridge Times, Atinuke Bankole compared INM to the 1950s civil rights movement. Both started out grassroots and protested social justice issues, and both were criticized for being disorganized. “Blaming the victim was rampant among polite, average white Americans back then. ‘Well, things wouldn’t be so bad for blacks if they weren’t so lazy. Black people are backwards and that is why they are  underdeveloped. Slavery ended 100 years ago. Get over it.’ Sound familiar?”

Of course, INM differs because Aboriginal people lived on this land centuries before most of us did. Colonialism and the treaties stemming from it are complicated. Yet, I do see a parallel between the two movements. Mainstream media don’t portray any minority well—black, disabled, or queer. But colonial history sets the Aboriginal population apart. And what’s lacking in much of the coverage is an understanding of that history. Deadlines will always be tight and budgets will no doubt get tighter, but Canada’s indigenous population is growing and the issues INM raised won’t go away. It’s time for journalists to take a step, even a small one, towards consistent, thoughtful coverage of indigenous people instead of waiting for the next crisis or protest.

Photographs by Eric J. Magiskan / AHKI photography

Jonathan Goldsbie is a Toronto civic geek. He bikes everywhere, drinks ethically sourced coffee and likes talking about local indie music in Kensington Market. And, of course, he tweets. Constantly. Over his two-and-a-half years on Twitter, he’s averaged about 35 tweets per day. But somehow, this seemingly harmless dude landed himself in one of the city’s most talked-about Twitter brawls of 2011. Goldsbie is such a prolific tweeter that early this year, many of his followers banded together through the hashtag #goldsbiephone to raise funds and update his “Flintstonian pterodactyl” to a fancy new Android. Armed with a new smartphone, he continues to take joy in calling people out. The Globe and Mail deemed him “loyal to few, loved and loathed in equal parts by many.”

Toronto Sun columnist Sue Ann Levy seems to be a member of the loathing contingent. She made it clear in her columns leading up to Pride 2011 that she wanted the city to stop funding Pride if Queers Against Israeli Apartheid was to march in the parade. So in March, Levy, who is Jewish, wrote to several Jewish community leaders, urging them to contact councillors and strip Pride Toronto of city money. The letter quickly leaked and, before long, Andrea Houston wrote a story about it for Xtra!, a gay and lesbian newspaper. She quoted city councillor Adam Vaughan: “[Sue Ann Levy] has an agenda. She is on the Ford team. She is doing work for the mayor… Take everything she says in light of that.” The pro-Palestinian organization bowed out of the parade after city hall threatened to pull Pride’s funding.

When Goldsbie heard about the letter, he was shocked: “I couldn’t believe the email had her Sun signature on it.” So he tweeted, “It can’t be kosher for a full-time newspaper columnist to be campaigning for councillors’ votes on an item about which she often writes.” Levy bantered back and forth with Goldsbie and name-calling eventually ensued, culminating with Levy tweeting, “Thx to Adm Vaughan for calling me influential int Xtra trash piece…and thx to leftist blowhard for showing his true anti-semetic colours.” Goldsbie responded: “You know, I’m pretty sure labelling a public figure anti-Semitic is defamatory, even if you misspell it.” The Sunremoved Levy from the Pride beat and while councillors slugged it out over Pride Toronto funding at city hall, she took a trip. She returned and wrote in her column , “I was glad to be in Mexico that week.”

Levy isn’t the only journalist to cause a stir on Twitter. In August 2011, Dave Naylor from the Calgary Sun came under attack for tweeting, “Maybe he’s not dead. Maybe he’s just stiff and needs a good massage,” after Jack Layton’s death. He was referencing a story that broke during the last federal election about the late NDP leader being found in a massage parlour 15 years earlier. Michael Coren, a Sun News television host, tweeted, “Still world hunger. More prayers to Jack please!” Despite many angry responses, Naylor and Coren managed to hold on to their jobs.

Damian Goddard, an on-air host from Rogers Sportsnet, was not so fortunate. The network fired him the day after he tweeted his unenthusiastic opinions about gay marriage in May 2011. (He said he supported “the traditional and TRUE meaning of marriage.”) And Octavia Nasr, CNN’s senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, experienced a similar fate. She tweeted in July 2010, “Sad to hear of the passing of [spiritual leader] Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah…One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.” Although Nasr tried to explain, saying she respects Fadlallah because he was a proponent of women’s rights, it was of little use. CNN fired her three days later.

Unfortunately for journalists, nuances can’t be explained in 140 characters, which is why news organizations are nervous about Twitter. They would prefer that journalistic bickering, activism and stupid jokes stay private, confined perhaps to the smoky press clubs of yore.

In an effort to get their way, major news outlets have released social media guidelines. But many insiders criticize these documents for being too restrictive and ignoring the fact that journalists are people too. Twitter is a great way for reporters to find stories, locate sources and gain a bigger audience—but the let-it-all-hang-out transparency also calls into question the myth of objectivity that underpins the entire profession.

As far back as 1898, The New York Evening Post believed impartial reporting would make more money because partisan papers couldn’t sell as much advertising space. Since then, impartiality has taken on a new meaning. In their 2007 book The Elements of Journalism, Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel write, “In the end, the discipline of verification is what separates journalism from entertainment, propaganda, fiction or art.” It is the discipline of journalism—not the reporter—that is objective. The goal, according to this view, is to record what happened correctly, regardless of personal views about Hezbollah, gay marriage or left-wing politicians. (And if this happens to sell more ads, even better.)

But social media have exposed the messy, complicated and opinionated side of journalists. It turns out reporters aren’t just objective information-gathering machines—they’re people too. Hence the new guidelines that many organizations have created to try to avoid the next Twitter meltdown. The rules range from gentle reminders to stern warnings: the National Post points out that a source can Google reporters before an interview and the Sun tells its journalists that “the same legal implications of the newspaper apply to social media broadcasts, as regards libel and defamation.” (Calling someone anti-Semitic apparently has the okay, though.)

All of the guidelines have one thing in common: play your role. Headstrong columnists are going to have more leeway with their tweets than political reporters. And editors, for their part, shouldn’t blurt out rash responses, which is why Raju Narisetti, managing editor of The Washington Post, had to email his staff some guidelines after an employee responded to critical tweets on the paper’s Twitter account over a column about gay teen suicide. Dozens of websites reposted Narisetti’s email, which said, “No branded Post accounts should be used to answer critics and speak on behalf of the Post.” But a personal account still allows journalists to voice their opinions—be it shamelessly or naively.

Rules can’t define what proper composure is for every journalist. The Toronto Star released a new social media policy in April 2011. Part of it reads: “Never post information on social media that could undermine your credibility with the public or damage the Star’s reputation in any way, including as an impartial source of news. Such postings could be construed by readers as evidence that the Star’s news coverage is biased.”

But the paper has no intention of taping the mouths of its reporters. “My role is not to censor people,” says public editor Kathy English. “But making personal comments against or for any of the candidates in the election would put a reporter who was covering the election in a tricky spot.” English, who has held her position since 2007, hears from hundreds of readers every year and she knows they still expect impartiality. She truly believes, “You can show personality without expressing strong opinions on issues.”

In defending the paper’s policy, English points to Susan Delacourt, who shows plenty of personality through her Twitter account. The Parliament Hill reporter, who has collected over 12,000 followers since she started tweeting two years ago, doesn’t have a problem showing any strong points of view because she devotes criticism to the government as a whole: “The government is the one that holds power and it’s our job to keep that power in check.”

Delacourt thinks there’s a disturbing tendency to call critical journalists biased. “I strongly disagree with that. Journalists need to abide by openness and honesty.” Still, she admits that her Twitter account isn’t policed by the Star much. “Twitter doesn’t make money,” she notes, “and my bosses aren’t interested in things that don’t make money.”

Rosemary Barton, a CBC national reporter on the Hill, uses Twitter for things she might not necessarily say on television. “There’s more room for humour, more room for my personality,” she says. But when it comes to showing any political biases, she agrees with Delacourt: “I actually don’t have any political views. I’m equally tough on everybody.”

She thinks CBC’s social media guidelines leave plenty of room for her personality even though they say, “The expression of personal opinions on controversial subjects or politics can undermine the credibility of CBC journalism and erode the trust of our audience.” But Barton knows that if she wasn’t using Twitter she would be missing out on a lot of inside access to ministers on the Hill. Like journalists, politicians make announcements on Twitter, and they certainly follow what reporters are saying about them. Barton has more than 14,000 followers and has tweeted more than 25,000 times. She says politicians “see me up in the foyer where I’m doing my main job and crack jokes with me about references I’ve made on Twitter.” For her, that interaction is invaluable.

But the policies don’t sit well with everyone. GigaOm’s senior writer Mathew Ingram (formerly the communities editor at the Globe) is an outspoken critic of these guidelines. He believes the best way to make social media work is to allow reporters and editors “to be human” and engage with readers through Twitter, Facebook, story comments and blogs. Strict social media rules encourage fear and paranoia. “Sure, the best way to avoid skin cancer is to never go outside,” Ingram says. “You might not get skin cancer, but you have a really shitty life and you die unhappy.”

Goldsbie, because he’s a freelancer, has freedom when writing under his Twitter persona. He’s also on good terms with many city councillors, mostly lefties, which means he’s able to get exclusive information from them. Goldsbie was a political activist and blogger before reporting at city hall and his opinions are a big part of what landed him a gig as a regular on the National Post’s Posted Toronto Political Panel. He believes objectivity is an inherently difficult concept: “I established myself as a personality first and then got journalism work because of it,” he says. Despite (or because of) his obvious left-wing biases, Goldsbie has amassed 4,300 followers. As a self-defined guerrilla advocacy journalist, he is comfortable with Twitter because it helps define him.

Duncan Clark, the Post’s vice president of digital media, explains that columnists have particular knowledge in an area. “Goldsbie is a columnist and with that there’s a different expectation,” he says. On the other hand, if reporters on a beat are expressing opinions on Twitter, “it compromises their ability to report on that story.”

It’s okay for Levy or Goldsbie to express whatever opinions they want—within reason—because that’s their job. It gets trickier when Barton or Evan Solomon, host of CBC’s Power and Politics, decides to tweet because there appears to be no middle ground between the messy freedom that Ingram encourages and the bloodless objectivity that CBC expects.

Not that Solomon has a problem with the corporation’s social media policy. He thinks journalists are capable of doing their jobs without letting their personal opinions leak in. “I think that’s what separates good reporting from shit reporting,” he says. With a two hour Monday to Friday political show, he can’t afford to appear biased. “If I’m perceived to be promoting one political view over another, then I’m not serving my audience in a way that I’m supposed to,” he says. He likes to compare the impartiality of journalism to that of a judge. He asks, “Do you think a judge, who has all sorts of views, is capable of applying the law in an unbiased way?” For Solomon, this is a much better question than, “Does a judge have biases?”

Solomon isn’t the only person to compare the concept of journalistic objectivity to that of a judge. Tim Currie, who helped write the social media guidelines published by the Canadian Association of Journalists in 2011, says, “Although we all have opinions and we all have biases, we also know judges have biases but we hope that they’ll put them aside and apply the law as best they can.”

But judges and journalists have two very different occupations. Journalists pursue their own evidence and often their own cases, whether that’s hard-hitting investigative reporting or reviewing an album. Bert Bruser, a media lawyer, believes news outlets are right to be concerned about Twitter. He’s wary of journalists tweeting about their social causes. Although transparency makes good journalism, he notes, “What’s at stake is the credibility of the news organization—and that’s a big problem people are grappling with.” Bruser, who has a permanent legal office at the Star, thinks journalists often say things they regret on Twitter and it leads to trouble for both them and their bosses.

One of the biggest shortcomings of these new social media guidelines is they serve to illustrate that the problem isn’t that journalists are human, but that some reporters are allowed to reveal more of themselves than others. From Barton’s Twitter account, no one can tell if she’s married or has kids, but Goldsbie has no problem tweeting his insecurities about a T-shirt decision.

Sun Media’s social media manager, William Wolfe-Wylie, says the best approach is “understanding yourself, your audience and how those two players can interact.” This explains why Levy—the Sun’s Toronto columnist—can start political brawls: she does the exact same thing in her columns. Goddard couldn’t bash gay marriage because he was a sports anchor.

These policies, in the end, are more for the news outlets than they are for the journalists they employ: they legally ensure that a journalist can be fired for tweeting something offensive or stupid. The Star, the Sun and CBC are simply covering their asses. Most, if not all, of the social media policies can be condensed into one simple rule: if you wouldn’t like it up on a 30-foot billboard, don’t post it. Save it for the bartender at the dusty old press club.

For now, we’ve got a bunch of reporters tweeting, and not talking about their feelings. But there are some personalities who refuse to be defined by social media guidelines, and they are best followed with a bag of popcorn. The Post and the Sun have long moved on since the Pride debacle between Levy and Goldsbie. In fact, so have the two combatants. In July, Goldsbie tweeted, “Saw @SueAnnLevy’s post-Pride column blowing in the wind along the sidewalk. Picked it up; read it. Was actually moved.” Levy was quick to respond: “At least you didn’t find the column in a bird cage. Thanks for the vote of support!”

And a month later, almost to the day, they were back at it, fighting over library funding. #SomeThingsNeverChange.