Politics is about perception (and always has been). Official messages are carefully constructed to paint a specific type of picture. It’s the journalist’s job, theoretically at least, to find the flaws and the hidden distortions in that image.

But what if the picture is perfect and makes everyone happy? A hot prime minister meets a cool president, and they become instant BFFs. Their wives become new-found “soulmates.” It’s all jokes and smiles, glitz and glamour, flowers and champagne.

I get it–such coverage is the charm of a state dinner. It’s a story journalists have to write because it’s a change of pace from all the phobias and deaths front pages are too often filled with. And readers love it, as proven by the most popular lists on Canadian news outlets yesterday and today. It makes them happy. It makes me happy, for a little while at least.

The problem, though, is that such clickbait political coverage always gets taken too far. Newsrooms forget that even state dinners have foreign policy implications, which, if not obvious, need to be deciphered. While some of that was talked about, it was brief. Something about methane and the environment. A rumor about border control policies. Some announcement about Arctic goals.

Instead, in true BuzzFeed fashion, the Toronto Star gave us a play-by-play of how Sophie Grégoire-Trudeau saved new “soulmate” Michelle Obama from a nasty tumble off of the stage, seconds-apart pictures included. “Who needs the Secret Service with friends like this?” read the opening line of the article that would have worked better with GIFs. 

Maclean’s decided a special photo gallery was needed to document the youngest Trudeau child’s visit. “Hadrien goes to Washington,” it was called in Hollywood-movie fashion.  In fact, only 30 percent of the articles posted under a special heading on the Maclean’s website actually talked about policy discussion. The rest were photo galleries, fashion and decor coverage and transcribed speeches (see screenshot below), similar categories as coverage be the Star and others.

The problem isn’t new. This is what news dictated by clicks looks like, for the most part. It doesn’t have to be, and has been proven not to be, but it’s the easiest method of coverage, and difficult not to do when words like “bromance” are involved.

Having said that, caution needs to be advised and heeded. Pictures can be perfect, but politics isn’t. Canadian journalists need to get over how hot their new prime minister and his family are. Trudeau hugging pandas doesn’t warrant asking “Are the Trudeaus the cuddliest Canadian family of all time?” And do we really need additional widespread coverage of his attendance at the pride parade five months before it’s due to take place, when it was already announced at the end of last year? Maclean’s 60-second interviews were fun to watch, but where are the investigations on fiscal policy, or follow-ups on MMIW and other campaign announcements?

At some point the celebration of our picture-perfect prime minister and his government needs to end, and journalists have to go back to basics. Make us happy, but keep us informed.

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.

Justin’s Trudeau’s hair might be the best weapon in the political business, just slightly ahead of Donald Trump’s golden locks.

After all it has made headlines in the past two years and signified Trudeau’s trajectory from Member of Parliament to leader of the Liberal Party.

“Justin Trudeau: Great hair but no credentials,” read an October 05, 2012, segment on the Toronto Sun website.

“Hair apparent Justin Trudeau changes look in leadership quest,” read a March 11, 2013, article by Canadian Press.

“Hair apparent: Is the son of a prime minister ready to take over the top job?” wrote The Economist on October 3, 2015.

Apart from the article by CP, which was a serious discussion about Trudeau’s hairstyle changes quoting an image consultant, the other two examples were more analytical discussions about Trudeau’s political abilities. The headlines, though, were all about the hair.

If the journalistic attention to Trudeau’s looks is to be taken seriously, it would seem that that We The Voters really care about this stuff, and maybe we do because everyone can’t help but talk about it: his youth, his looks, his style.

At one instance, during her summary of the election campaign on CBC’s The National, Wendy Mesley said, “Justin Trudeau was talking about youth, and not just his own.” In a Maclean’s piece on Trudeau’s tougher image in debates, Jaime Weinman uses his hair to depict the new image akin to the CP article cited above:

“Above all, there’s the hair. When he became the leader of the floundering Liberal party two years ago, his hair was longer, sometimes frizzier, always giving the illusion that he was too cool to cut it. Now he’s got shorter, slicker hair to go with his tougher manner.”

This image-centric attention towards a political leader is, unfortunately, not uncommon. Hilary Clinton’s pantsuits, Tom Mulcair’s beard, Barack Obama’s ear-to-ear grin, Rob Ford’s ‘crack-confession’ tie, Chris Christie’s weight. The style and image of political leaders becomes the most memorable thing of election coverage because of its visual nature.

Accordingly, there is an evident feedback loop where one comment on a politician’s hair leads to another, which leads to another and so forth. First, The Huffington Post publishes a photo gallery of the evolution of Trudeau’s hair. Then, the Conservative Party puts out a TV ad stating that Trudeau is “just not ready,” but “nice hair, though.” Toronto Sun puts together a list of the highlights of Canadian prime ministerial hairstyles in response to the ad, which is aptly titled “A nice ‘do isn’t a don’t to become Prime Minister.” Margaret Atwood then responds to all of this in an opinion column for the National Post: “Some are born with hair, some achieve hair, and some have hair thrust upon them through laws and customs.” Then, I write this blog post.

In all these examples, there is no discussion of Justin Trudeau’s politics, his views on policy or his plans for government. It’s all about the ‘do.

It’s absurd that hair could be such a big issue. It’s more absurd that election coverage almost presents Trudeau more as a young man with a great head of hair than as a leader with a pro-middle class platform for instance.

Yet, hair matters. We want a leader with a great head of hair over a politically capable mind. And when out of the three leaders on the stage, one looks like Justin Trudeau, it’s hard not to write about it, even if perhaps we shouldn’t.

A leaked internal PowerPoint presentation shows the federal Conservatives are considering a change to the Copyright Act of Canada to allow “political actors” to freely use news clippings and TV footage in their advertisements without permission.

The document says the proposed amendment would remove the need for broadcasters to authorize use of their content, but wouldn’t affect their discretion to choose what they air. Several of Canada’s major broadcasters have been exercising this ability. In May, CBC, Radio Canada, CTV, Rogers and Shaw Media sent a letter to all federal and provincial parties, warning they would “not accept any political advertisement which uses our content without our express authorization.”

Under section 335(1) of the Canada Elections Act, broadcasters are required to make advertising space available for purchase by political parties during the writ period of a general election. The Act also appoints an arbitrator who issues specific guidelines on the content of messages and deals with disputes between parties and broadcasters. According to arbitrator Peter Grant’s most recent guidelines, broadcasters can refuse to air an ad if it’s obscene or profane, exposes individuals or groups to hatred, or contravenes the law. Under the current rules, broadcasters’ hands may be tied when it comes to showing ads that use their content, with or without permission.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist suggested Canada’s current laws surrounding fair dealing may already protect political parties from copyright claims. Even if this proposed exception isn’t made, parties may continue to use news clips without permission anyways. Last year, a Conservative attack ad on Justin Trudeau took footage of the Liberal leader performing a striptease from The Huffington Post without permission.

Certainly, these developments look bleak for those who don’t believe political parties should be able to steal material from the networks one day and run ads on those same networks the next.

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In 1967, Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously said, “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.” Recently, Trudeau’s bedroom activities were fair game for Ezra Levant on his show, The Source. Levant said Liberal leader Justin Trudeau’s “frat boy” antics around a stranger’s bridal party were no surprise considering his parents’ behavior, calling his father a “slut” and saying his mother Margaret “wasn’t much different.”

While the original video has been taken down, a column similar to the monologue is still on Levant’s blog. Trudeau replied by boycotting all Sun Media journalists, refusing to answer their questions until he received an response from the chain.

Trudeau’s actions sparked a debate about the freedom of the press. Chantal Hébert said he obstructed fair journalistic access. Blacklisting one of the country’s largest newspaper publishers in the lead up to a federal election may not be appropriate. Levant’s views expressed on his show aren’t representative of all Sun Media journalists, so why should the entire news organization suffer as a result of one loose canon? But, as political science professor Emmett Macfarlane pointed out, freedom of the press guarantees that the government won’t restrict journalists, not that reporters will land interviews.

Bruce Anderson argued we should take the spotlight off Trudeau and ask ourselves how low we’re willing to let media standards fall. Not only was Levant’s rant based mostly on opinion, he also got many facts wrong. He claimed Trudeau pushed his way into the photo, when in fact, the wedding party had asked him to join. Levant also failed to mention that the groom didn’t have a problem with the kiss. Anderson questioned why journalists spent so much time criticizing Trudeau’s response instead of looking into Levant’s lack of integrity, which he claims is “an embarrassment to journalists.”

On Monday, Sun Media—not Levant—apologized for the segment, saying it shouldn’t have aired. Trudeau’s camp accepted the apology and lifted the ban on its journalists. And we await the next round of controversy between the two.