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.

As with many things on the internet, it all started with someone stating their 140-character opinion about something they had watched.

what else do i need to do here pic.twitter.com/zi8HpLpOA7

— Scaachi (@Scaachi) November 2, 2015

The comment was made in regard to Scaachi Koul’s appearance during a segment on The National about affirmative action in Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s cabinet.  Koul, a senior writer for BuzzFeed Canada, spoke in agreement with Trudeau’s promise to have a 50-percent-female cabinet, which placed her in opposition to her fellow panelists Jonathan Kay, editor of The Walrus, and Tasha Kheiriddin, a CBC political commentator and National Post columnist.

Koul was the only person of colour on the panel. That’s a double-edged sword. It’s great for diversity and representative opinions. It also, however, implicitly means she has higher standards and expectations to meet, which she notes in her response to all the comments she received:

“I spent too much of the morning looking at Twitter, watching my feed fill with people trying to guess my race, whether I represented WOC appropriately, whether I had been crushed by the other two panelists. Not just the question of whether I did an okay job, or if I made valid points — rather, was I everything?”

The internet applauded Koul’s blunt reponse. From André Picard to other women journalists like Denise Balkissoon and Heather Mallick, many retweeted affirmatively. All of them implied that the abuse female pundits like Koul face is absurd, unwarranted and just plain wrong. I say “implied” here because that’s how I interpret the quoted retweets of Koul’s article.

Retweets, however, are not a step toward affirmative change. As an industry, we talk a lot about the need to increase newsroom diversity, but we refuse to delve into specifics. If we do, we don’t see changes implemented, or  we haven’t yet.

Why not, though? Why have we still not taken steps toward addressing the integration of journalists of colour? It is so rare to see a panel that is representative of society in terms of gender and race, which is probably why those who try to break the glass ceiling receive reactions like the one above.

Judging by the retweets, Koul is not the only female journalist of colour who has had to face more commentary about her appearance than her content. While most of Twitter may have responded in kind, there is a discussion to be had about the formation of panels, who is on them and how we respond to them. As Koul wrote,

“I want to do the panel and try to be the voice, but it so frequently results in coming home to attacks on my character, my race, my looks, my existence. If I don’t do the panel, my existence is merely entirely ignored by the public consciousness. You suffer consequences either way.”

From one female journalist of colour to another, I salute Scaachi Koul for surviving yesterday and bringing problems faced by female journalists of colour to light. It’s not just about the inclusion of diverse voices anymore, but the acceptance of those voices without commentary on what they look like.

The irony is that so much time was spent on Twitter yesterday debating the pros and cons of a 50-percent-female government cabinet, when the mirror in front of us shows that we, the journalists, should be talking just as seriously about parity and proportional representation.