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

Here is a sneak peek at one story from our Spring 2015 issue of the Ryerson Review of Journalism magazine.

The small cooperative work space for journalism students at Ryerson was crowded with professors, working journalists, community members and the few j-schoolers who could squeeze in. Suddenly, U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden appeared on a large screen—the moment we were waiting for. I was prepared to live blog the event, but being a journalist, a thought occupied me the moment Snowden spoke: Is it in the public interest to live blog every word he says? Instead, I chose to live tweet, which in my opinion gave me a chance to filter what’s in the public interest.

Snowden was telecasting into Ryerson for the launch of the Snowden Archive by the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression. The archive includes 400 documents already published by media outlets around the world—a small portion of the 50,000 turned over by Snowden to his original collaborators. It’s now live, with more documents to be made available as they are published by media outlets around the world. As CJFE mentions on its website, the archive does not include documents that have not already been published by other sources.

I have tested the archive and found it easy to navigate. It’s something that I found marvellous: being able to read and write about documents with crucial information that matters to lives of people in Canada and abroad. Mass surveillance affects everyone and journalists are not the only ones able to read these documents. Unless I have a story with a different angle, I will end up writing something that another journalist have written about. Documents on the archive are already published. Therefore, other journalists made the decision for us on what to be available to the public, other reporters and researchers like me. That’s something I will keep in mind if I plan to pitch any story that might involve any information from the published documents that appeared on major news outlets.

During the Q & A, Snowden talked about the importance of determining what’s in the public interest. “This matters to people, when we talk about mass surveillance,” he said. However, he believes that journalists must use their “public interest judgment” to determine which documents or information should be made available to people through media outlets. Snowden further added that he is not at a position to decide what’s in the public interest. He also told the audience that journalists have the duty to determine what information might cause “harm to particular individuals,” including those who work at governments’ intelligences. The assumption is that responsible journalists will make the right decision that’s in the benefit of the society.

I agree that the archive is a useful tool—mainly for research. Making certain documents available to people raises their awareness about issues that matter to them. As Snowden said, matters linked to mass surveillance and policies related to that “need to be debated.” And they won’t be debated if information is not made available to the public. However, I doubt that the archive will be of great use to journalists. The documents in the archive have been published by media such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Mundo and The Intercept. Would their “public interest judgment” be the same as of other journalists if documents were leaked to them?

 

Image courtesy of Frederic BISSON.

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Last summer, The Globe and Mail wanted to introduce a drastic change: editorial staff writing and editing advertorial copy as part of their regular duties. If this branded content proposal became a mandate, journalists would serve advertisers rather than their readers. It might have happened at the Globe if the unionized staff did not take a stand and vote for a strike. Branded content wasn’t the only item in the negotiations—job security and wages were also sticking points—but it was a vital issue.

With the help of trade union Unifor, the paper and its employees averted a strike. Unifor Local 87-M, the Southern Ontario Newsmedia Guild, has 2,800 members including 374 at the Globe and others at the Toronto Star, the London Free Press and numerous other publications. When journalists face job cuts, unions are increasingly powerless—but they can still play a role in ethical battles, such as the one over branded content.

During the Globe negotiations, the concern was not only with writing advertorials, but also the way in which it would be presented to readers. According to Howard Law, director of the media sector at Unifor, writing branded content affects the integrity of the journalist. To Paul Morse, president of Unifor Local 87-M, printing branded content and calling it regular reporting is “a line in the sand” for journalists. “They were asking them to write content that was sponsored by an advertiser, but it would look like a regular report,” says Morse. According to a Unifor memo obtained by Jesse Brown and published on the Canadaland website, the branded content would be “vetted by the advertiser prior to publication and held out to readers as staff written-content.”

No journalist is immune to such challenges. Morse says that the negotiations at the Globe around working conditions, including the branded content proposal, sent a “loud message to journalists across Canada” that those issues matter.

The paper eventually withdrew the proposal, but ethicist Klaus Pohle, a journalism professor at Carleton University, is still shocked and appalled. “I expect that of rinky-dink newspapers, not The Globe and Mail,” he says. “The ethical issue is clear: it’s a conflict of interest. When you ask a journalist to write promotional advertising as news, that’s almost fraudulent.”

Pohle says journalists can’t wear two hats at the same time and therefore, advertising and news can’t overlap. He also notes that most readers are unable to differentiate between branded content and news, so writing advertiser-approved copy will make the situation even worse. Branded content is approved by the advertiser, but isn’t about the advertiser.

The union, journalists and the public are aware of the newspapers’ economic challenges. But there are limits to compromises. Unifor’s Sue Andrew, chair of the Globe unit, believes journalists write for readers and not advertisers. “We’re not in the business of having our writing vetted by corporations,” she says. “Collectively, we felt that blurring the line between our journalism and paid-for advertising copy would have eroded the Globe’s long-term integrity for short-term financial gain.”

Addressing the financial challenges does not mean that journalists are willing to give up their basic journalistic ethics. While ethical values aren’t negotiable, there are ways to address these issues. Pohle suggests a solution to financially struggling publications that attempt to propose something similar to the Globe: “Hire promotional writers and clearly label the advertorial,” he says. “That’s conventional. That’s normal.”

Editorial staffers resisted the Globe’s advertorial proposal, but they had a union that bargained on their behalf. However, unions are not the answer to every problem—especially when it comes to job cuts. Steve Faguy, a copy editor at Montreal’s The Gazette, says the Montreal Newspaper Guild has been involved in negotiations in his workplace that included pushing people who were close to retirement into retirement, while keeping younger employees. There is little that can be done to stop the job cuts or the changing job environment. “If there is an order, ‘There has to be X number of people employed,’ then that’s what will happen,” Faguy says. With the decrease in revenue and the transition to digital, job cuts are inevitable. Unions support staff journalists, but that doesn’t help employers increase short-term revenue.

In the case of the Globe, the unionized workers would have walked off the job if they didn’t reach a deal. Whether in print or broadcast, employees are facing challenging situations and there is no guarantee that advertorial proposals will not be introduced in the future by other organizations, as “native advertising” has become commonplace.

For most journalists, core ethical values are not negotiable. But the fear is that an employer might use a proposal like the Globe’s as a means to an end—make staff accept offers that compromise their wages and job security so they don’t have to alter their journalistic principles.

Photo credit: Brian Wolk

Videos depicting beheadings of journalists, aid workers and other foreigners are too common as we focus on the conflict in Iraq and Syria. The photos of the James Foley beheading that were captured from the video released by ISIS haunt me. They’re terrifying.

In late November, news regarding an Israeli-Canadian who was reportedly captured by ISIS members occupied Canadian and international headlines. Unlike Foley, Gill Rosenberg isn’t a journalist. She’s a fighter.

From the Toronto Star: “Canadian-born woman reportedly captured by ISIS.”

CTV reported that “ISIS may have captured B.C. woman.”

The National Post: “Islamist websites claim ISIS kidnapped Canadian woman who joined fight against jihadists”

Looking at these headlines, my first reaction was concern for Gill Rosenberg’s family members and loved ones. Grisly images flashed through my mind as I read the headlines. The first question that I asked myself was: “Will ISIS behead her?”

As many of the articles mention, websites linked to Islamic State extremists released the reports saying Rosenberg had been kidnapped, which was in turn reported by international media. The key fact to highlight: Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham extremists claimed the kidnapping, nobody else. Rosenberg was fighting alongside the Kurdish militia, which denied the kidnapping.

The National Post initially shared the news via the Canadian Press. There was no mention of any source from the Kurdish militia. The Post read, “An Israeli newspaper report says Islamist websites are claiming extremists have kidnapped an Israeli-Canadian woman who joined Kurdish fighters overseas.” The Star published a similar one. Both newspapers later posted updates as the situation unfolded, but at first there was no source mentioned except Israeli newspapers citing jihadist websites with little reference to Rosenberg’s Facebook post.

It’s a conflict zone that’s difficult to get to for journalists, but reporting on a kidnapping should be something handled with caution. It’s not only breaking news, it’s a human being in danger. On November 20, just over a week after the news of the kidnapping, Rosenberg posted on her Facebook page saying her profile would be managed by someone else until December 8 and asked friends not to message her.

A quick search would have shown any reporter that she might had chosen to disappear from social media, that she wasn’t quiet by force.

If she was really kidnapped, the Kurds would have confirmed it. Later, she appeared on Facebook to say: “Guys, I’m totally safe and secure. I don’t have internet access or any communication devices with me for my safety and security.” It took many news outlets one day to report the updates. However, this day could have been distressing for those who care about her. Her Facebook wall was filled with posts from people who seemed concerned. All those who follow news of the conflict are aware of what groups like ISIS are capable of doing when they capture someone. This issue would have been solved if journalists had referred to Kurdish militia prior reporting on what ISIS claimed.

Congratulations to the good people at Spacing, whose 10th anniversary issue has been dubbed the best Canadian magazine cover of 2013 by our readers. Sarah Fortunato’s City Hall cake (with art direction and design by publisher Matthew Blackett) garnered 26 votes from our readers.

We also tip our hat to the people at Maisonneuve, whose late entry was just four votes behind the winner.

Last month, the Nova Scotia government gave its freedom-of-information (FOI) watchdog, Dulcie McCallum, two weeks’ notice. What it didn’t give her was a reason why.

McCallum, who held the post for seven years, was shocked by the decision and said it showed disrespect for her office—not to mention everything it stands for. If the officer in charge of transparency doesn’t know why she was terminated, there’s definitely a problem.

“I don’t think cabinet knows who I am,” said McCallum—who, unlike most FOI commissioners, is not an independent officer of the legislature and can thus be ousted by the cabinet.

She may be underselling herself. Two weeks ago, her office published a controversial report criticizing the Nova Scotia government for ignoring its own laws and withholding information from foster children. Regardless of whether the report had any connection to her termination (McCallum, for one, doesn’t think so), it was a prime example of oversight done properly, and of what the province might lack in McCallum’s absence. (The province is currently searching for a replacement.)

But what Nova Scotia—and Canada—needs is more people like McCallum. Our country’s access-to-information laws are already outdated, according to a nation-wide group of FOI officers, including McCallum. In 2012, Newfoundland and Labrador amended its access legislation to make obtaining info even more difficult. University of King’s College journalism professor Fred Vallance-Jones described the amendment as “the biggest step backward in access in Canada in recent memory.” And last year, Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) gave the federal government a D- for access to information.

“From the silencing of scientists to police posing as journalists to the surveillance of aboriginal activists, this pervasive issue threatens citizens’ right to free expression and undermines democratic society,” the CJFE report reads.

There is, however, some good news: the CJFE’s D- ranking is a slight improvement from three straight years of F’s, and Newfoundland and Labrador Premier, Tom Marshall, has announced that an independent committee will soon review its access law—but let’s not plan the parade just yet.

McCallum’s dismissal is a reminder that progress on the FOI front is fleeting. We can’t sit back and hope things will get better. Otherwise, next time a freedom-of-information commissioner gets canned, we may not even hear about it.

Remember to follow the Review and its masthead on Twitter. Email the blog editor here.

Last week, The New Yorker published a 17,000-word piece on Barack Obama by editor David Remnick. I haven’t read the feature yet, so I don’t know much about it, but I know how long it is because:

• Gawker noted it in a story about quote approval.
• So did the Washington Post.
• So did The Wire
• So did other people.
• In a 45-minute interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, the author and the host mentioned the word count several times.

What little I do know of the story indicates that it is similar to Michael Lewis’s feature on Obama in the October 2012 Vanity Fair. Just as Remnick’s piece has been heralded for being long, so was Lewis’s for how long it took. “Hanging around Barack Obama for six months, in the White House, aboard Air Force One, and on the basketball court…” read part of the deck on Lewis’s story. Before anyone got the chance to read it, writers dutifully noted this access: see CNBC, NPR, Daily Kos and Business Insider (who called Lewis’s access “the coolest thing” about his story).

North of the border, when The Globe and Mail finally rolled out its investigation into Doug Ford’s teenage years, editor-in-chief John Stackhouse noted that the reporters had spent 18 months on the story. (The time span was also mentioned in the article itself.)

This intense attention to everything about a story except its quality is part of a trend that New York Times Magazine writer Jonathan Mahler recently called “fetishizing the form.” Mahler wrote that this obsession over word count was partly responsible for the initial praise (followed by torrent of criticism) heaped on Grantland’s troubling story, “Dr. V’s Magical Putter.”

Mahler wrote that a long-form story’s goal “should be to understand and illuminate its subject, and maybe even use that subject to (subtly) explore some larger, more universal truths. Above all, that requires empathy, the real hallmark of great immersive journalism.”

He’s right that “Dr. V’s Magical Putter” lacked anything even remotely resembling empathy—one of many problems with it, as Christina Kahrl explained—and while it is certainly the most egregious example, it’s sadly not the only story to be praised more for its making than for its success in exploring universal truths. It’s like saying you enjoy Double Bubble because you watched a segment on How It’s Made.

This isn’t to say, as some have suggested, that the term “long-form” be jettisoned in favour of a different label. But it’s a poor criterion for judging a piece of journalism.

Remember to follow the Review and its masthead on Twitter. Email the blog editor here.

From the department of “Things That Make People Complain About ‘The Media,’ Whatever That Means.”