The Tyee Podcast: Rachel Gilmore Gives Us a Reality Check

Note: Episode transcripts may contain errors. Always check the corresponding audio before quoting any part of the transcript.

Harrison Mooney
How does misinformation spread? How do journalists verify what's true, and what does it take to report on extremism in Canada? Hey listeners, it's Harrison Mooney, coming to you today with a special bonus episode of The Tyee Podcast. About a month ago, just before this podcast launched, I hosted a panel discussion for The Tyee on misinformation and the media. We called it Reality Check: LIVE! Onstage that evening were investigative journalist Rachel Gilmore, Tyee senior editor Jen St. Denis and Mo Amir, host of This Is Vancolour. And today we've got that panel discussion for your listening enjoyment, recorded live in front of a wonderful crowd at Simon Fraser University. If you want to watch the full event, including a keynote address by Rachel Gilmore on her experiences dealing with online extremism and introductory remarks from yours truly, head over to The Tyee’s YouTube page or visit our website at thetyee.ca. Now, without further ado, it's Reality Check: LIVE!

[music]

Harrison Mooney
Let's do that again. Rachel Gilmore, everybody.

Rachel Gilmore
Thank you.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. Let's give that to Jeanette. Jeanette, do you have your own clicker? You're in charge of the screen behind me, so you have to do screen stuff. Rachel, it's weird to become a neo-Nazi because you're lonely.

Rachel Gilmore
I know. I know.

Harrison Mooney
I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done that. I feel like there's, there's other stuff you can do, like you could join a book club.

Rachel Gilmore
Yeah, they actually have those in the Nazi spaces.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, I wasn't thinking a neo-Nazi book club, but I mean, I guess that makes sense.

Rachel Gilmore
That’s the book Jason Kenney was defending recently, that's a popular one in those book clubs. Anyway…

Harrison Mooney
You could become a Tyee Builder, that's one way to make friends. You'll be friends with me, then all of my coworkers at The Tyee, you'll help us put on this incredible journalistic outlet, you'll help us, you'll fund us, you'll put my kids through college. And you can do that, by the way, by going to [email protected] That's just something you're — subscribe.thetyee.ca, right? Support.thetyee.ca, Is it on the screen behind me? It should be. Oh, it just says my name. OK. Or another thing you can do to make friends is you can host an event like this.

Rachel Gilmore
Yeah.

Harrison Mooney
And then just fill up a panel, like a little talkback panel. Like, I actually can just add more friends right now. Watch this. All right, I'm gonna say Jen St. Denis, come on down. Jen St. Denis is a reporter and editor at The Tyee. In 2023 she won a Canadian Association of Journalists Written News Award for her reporting on a fatal fire at the Winters Hotel in Vancouver. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, and in 2025 and I don't know if you've heard about this, it's not like you have a plaque up at the office or anything, she was included in Vancouver Magazine's Power 50 list. That's right, you are looking at one of the most powerful figures in this city. And she currently focuses on right-wing political trends, is that accurate? Is that your main focus, right-wing political trends?

Jen St. Denis
I call it right-wing political trends when I'm trying to be a little bit neutral. Sometimes I just call it nonsense.

Harrison Mooney
Right? I thought you were gonna say Nazis, like Rachel did, that you just fight Nazis, is that what you do for work?

Jen St. Denis
Nonsense, not Nazis.

Harrison Mooney
I misheard.

Rachel Gilmore
She's one of the few people who understands almost everything I say.

Harrison Mooney
I can do this again. Check this out. Mo Amir is the host of the TV talk show This Is Vancolour, which is wrapping up its fifth season, I believe. Thursday nights.

Mo Amir
Thursday nights at nine. You're forgiven for not watching tonight. It's fine.

Harrison Mooney
What do we do now? I'm Tivo-ing it. Do we, don't Tivo anymore? I'm gonna watch it on YouTube next time.

Mo Amir
YouTube the next day.

Harrison Mooney
I'll watch the best parts on YouTube later.

Rachel Gilmore
Does anyone know the score of the Habs game? Speaking of... really?

Harrison Mooney
OK so how many people were actually trying not to find out the score, until...

Rachel Gilmore
I'm so sorry if you were recording it.

Harrison Mooney
Hands up if that spoiled it for you. That's fine. It's fine.

Rachel Gilmore
Also, these guys were on my flight on the way here, isn't that fun?

Harrison Mooney
That's cool. Did you know that you were?

Audience Member
I approached her at the airport in, like, a very intimidating...

Harrison Mooney
Really, did you walk up and just like. This was two nice white guys you met on your flight.

Rachel Gilmore
It's so rare.

Harrison Mooney
So that's possible as well. That's exciting. I think we have, like, a special app for questions for this one. Can we, can we throw that slide up here? We're using the Slido app. I wonder if I can do my own login. Here is this, somebody, somebody come over here. Here, I'll do it myself. I got it. Hey guys, what do we think about traditional both-sides journalism? I, you know, you, you basically made it seem like it's a stupid thing to do, Jen, do you, do you have any, any opinions about both-sides journalism? Are you objective? I sit next to you. Are you objective? Tell me now.

Jen St. Denis
Well, OK. There's a difference between, like, how we gab in the newsroom and then what gets put on the page. I'm a real traditional all-, not both-sides, but all-sides journalist, where I am really rigorous and want to go and talk to everybody and make sure that everybody gets heard. Partly for legal reasons, so we don't get sued. That's very important. What Rachel is doing is, not everyone kind of realizes what Rachel is doing. Rachel is doing, like, a type of journalism that's, its columns, basically opinion columns, but she's also doing deep reporting and deep investigative reporting, and there are, there is other models for this. Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times does this. He just had a huge piece about Gaza and prisoner abuse, and so there is a model for this. I just think the way that Rachel does it on social media, on TikTok, and on Reels is new, and people aren't expecting it there, but it's not a new form of journalism, and it's totally 100% journalism.

Rachel Gilmore
Thanks, Jen.

Jen St. Denis
You're welcome.

Harrison Mooney
You do a different kind of.. would you call yourself a journalist, Mo?

Mo Amir
I don't, I don't know if I fit in that label, I mean, talk show host, but I am an opinionist, I do write for The Tyee as well, and I obviously give my own opinions on my show. So no, I wouldn't like to categorize myself as some sort of neutral reporter, certainly not an investigative reporter by any means, but I do find the issue of both siding to be very frustrating if there is one side that is just not telling the truth, or if there's one side that is logically inconsistent all the time, and you know it's like, well, you don't, you don't put the criticisms of on that and the other side, and it's like, well, I do criticize the other side, but they're just not doing those things as much, and so I find, how can you possibly be quote-unquote balanced when, when that's the imbalance?

Harrison Mooney
I feel you have...

Rachel Gilmore
I was just gonna say, like, yeah, that's one of the most frustrating parts, like when I got this reputation for being so hard on right wingers. When I was like back when I was at Global, they were already on my ass, and it was because I was doing reporting on conspiracy theory dog whistles, and I'm sorry Trudeau wasn't doing it as much as Poilievre, and I wasn't gonna just manufacture like he was, and I actually think that's something that you see sometimes is media will go extra hard on a story that traditionally is something you see more from a different political party if another political party does it, because it's an opportunity to see, to show, ‘Hey, see, we go after them too.’ And they'll go like a little kind of overcompensate, and that's a symptom of the both-sidesism,

Mo Amir
And I think it's particularly frustrating right now in B.C. with a lot of the land title and reconciliation issues, where there are political actors that are pushing things that are just simply not true. You have one side saying we should argue extinguishment in court when we've already done that and it's failed. You have one side that says no, no, the land in B.C. is not unceded, when from the Royal Proclamation to Supreme Court decisions we have determined that it is unceded, and so that's where I get very frustrated when people are like, ‘Well, you're really picking on this side and they're not even in government,’ and it's like, well, they're lying to you, that's why I have to pick on them.

Rachel Gilmore
Do you want to know something funny? I was at a party once, and I said that to Andrew Coyne, and I was like, you know, it's hard, because, like, you can't just pretend that everyone's lying as much as Poilievre is, and like, spreading as many conspiracies and stuff, and he was like, yeah. Anyway, that's a little tea for you.

Harrison Mooney
Do we think that there is, like, any kind of objectivity that is possible or good, or you know, something that we should aspire to, or are we really just trying to be truthful? I'm wondering sometimes if, like, I wonder sometimes if there is a, like, a way to try to speak to both sides, but be honest.

Jen St. Denis
I think we should try, and this is hard. It's hard to do, and this is why not everybody likes being a journalist. We do need to really try to understand what people are going through, why they are holding those political opinions. This is not easy for most people in society to do. Most people, if they are, you know, on the right and have voted conservative all their lives, they're not super interested in thinking about what a super left-wing person is thinking, like that's most of us are not interested in doing that. As journalists, we have to be, in order to do our jobs properly. So I think that's, that's tough, but like that's kind of our job, that's why we're doing this.

Harrison Mooney
Do you find it difficult to muster sympathy sometimes for what's going on in neo-Nazi circles? I mean, not sympathy, but I mean, you know, just to explain it and try to connect with, you know, the ideas and why they ended up at these ideas.

Rachel Gilmore
I sometimes get frustrated by the amount of sympathy I feel. I'm like you. I was talking to Jen about this earlier, and I felt like even in my speech I was sitting down here, I was like, ‘Oh, I hope I didn't make it sound like I feel too bad for these guys,’ because, like, obviously they make their choices, to be clear, you know. But yeah, like, I, the problem is, is when you look into the backgrounds of a lot of these people who end up being neo-Nazis, there's often some pretty awful shit. Not always. Some of them are just weird, but, like, I don't know, there's usually some source of trauma. Like the number of times, and he might be lying too, but the number of times I've heard Jeremy MacKenzie describe the horrific things that he saw in Afghanistan, I'm like, oh, this is a guy who's got some issues, and it's like we really need men to go to therapy, but, but you know, it is, it's hard, because if your goal is people being de-radicalized, because I mean, why else do we do this, right? Like, I don't, I'm not reporting on them just for the love of the game. I want there to not be Nazis anymore, and that's what I want people to be pulled out of these rabbit holes, and to pull them out, you have to understand how they got in there in the first place.

Harrison Mooney
I want to ask you, Mo, and you, Rachel, you guys have built your audiences and kind of tailored your content to the social media world has that, how has that affected your work, and how do you think it's different from, say, the work that you do, Jen? Writing, you know, old-timey traditional journalism with your hat that says ‘press,’ you know, yeah, yeah. yeah, yeah. I mean, tell me, what I told somebody on the way over here that I was moderating this event, and they were like, 'Oh, Rachel Gilmore, the TikTok journalist.’ And so I wrote down, 'Ask Rachel if it's reductive to be called the TikTok journalist.’ Is it? Is that something that you embrace? How does TikTok inform your journalism?

Rachel Gilmore
Yeah, I mean, I think it's our responsibility as journalists to be on TikTok or be on all these platforms, because our job is to communicate the news and facts to people, so that they can be informed citizens in society, and you, that means you have to go where people's eyeballs are. That's why we had the town crier, and then we had radio, and then we had TV, and now we have TikTok, and you know, it's just I actually got really frustrated sometimes by some, you know, colleagues of mine, who would almost be snobby about these tools, like they, they acted like these tools were below them, and it was kind of, it's funny, like there were a lot of people who would call me a, you know, they.. they'd use the fact that I was using these tools and kind of combine it with some misogyny, and they'd be like, ‘Oh, she's that TikTok bimbo,’ and stuff like that, and now I see those people making TikToks. You know, like Brian Lilley's, like, you know, making vertical videos now, and I'm like, but, but that's the thing, like, you, you just, you can't be precious about it, so if people are gonna think I'm, you know, a TikTok journalist, or want to call me an influencer and not a journalist, you know, even though I'm still doing rigorous journalism, you know, I'm not just summarizing other people's headlines, I'm actually doing my own reporting, or if I am going to refer to someone, I'll do it as a column where I'm actually like adding my thoughts or adding, I always make sure I add something extra to it, yeah. People can call me whatever they want, and I'm just going to keep informing the public and not let it get to me, because everyone's got an opinion, you know, and I just want people to know the news.

Harrison Mooney
Mo, do you have to be on TikTok?

Mo Amir
I am on TikTok. I do not have to be. No, I don't have to be on TikTok. What I will say is, I mean, Rachel, you are a serious, heavy-hitting journalist, and I think what

Rachel Gilmore
Aaron Gunn doesn't seem to think so. Sorry.

Mo Amir
I think what irks people is, and you know they're wrongheaded in this, obviously, but what irks people is the aesthetic, right? Because again, you're on a medium where you are competing for eyeballs, and so you use things like sarcasm and humour and a bit of silliness, and people seem to get very upset by that. My journey into the media realm was very different. I didn't go to j-school, I literally started a podcast on a whim. Within a year, I was commenting on Global, and then CBC, and then within three years I had my show on CHEK. And thank you, I wasn't looking for applause, but I'll take it

Rachel Gilmore
I think that's awesome.

Mo Amir
But I did that with one sort of value in mind, and I was doing it for fun and out of passion, and that value was I just need to make things accessible. I'm not here to try to sound smart. I want to bring on guests, and I tell guests this all the time, as like general audience, you know, break it down so that someone who is not familiar with the material can follow along. And when I do commentary, that's what I try to accomplish as well, and I think that that alternative route also gets on a much lesser scale the same type of criticism about, you know, aesthetic, or it's not serious, because there's some jokes, or you know, tonality in there that people don't like, but I think it's still like I think the work should still speak for itself. I hope mine does. I certainly know that yours does as well, and you know that's just the changing nature of our media cycle now. We used to live in a world where, and I think if you're a millennial, you understand this, that you, you were not bombarded with the news all the time. You would go out to retrieve the news, either by watching the six o'clock news or reading the newspaper, or even the, in the age of the internet, by going to websites yourself, and now for the younger and younger audiences, their source of news is getting it through Instagram, or through TikTok. It's being fed to them, and in that, you know, that change, where things are being pushed onto you, you do have to break out of a very noisy, cluttered space. Yeah.

Jen St. Denis
I'm on TikTok too, Harrison.

Rachel Gilmore
Yeah, Jen's TikToks are really good too. You should all follow her if you don't already. I repost her a lot.

Harrison Mooney
I've seen your TikToks, Jen. I've watched, I've watched them. I will say I was hoping that you, you might say that you don't have to be on TikTok to be a good journalist, just because I don't want to be on TikTok.

Jen St. Denis
Does anybody here follow Jamelle Bouie, the New York Times columnist?

Harrison Mooney
Oh, yeah,

Jen St. Denis
He's amazing. He started doing reels and TikToks in a really, like, serious, considered way, and he's been really, and he's made a lot of people mad about this, but he's like, you do have to be on these mediums, because the audience is huge, and that's where that's where it is. The next election is going to be fought on Instagram, like I can see that happening. So, yeah, we do kind of need to be there. The weird thing is, the parasocial relationship that people develop with you, looking at your face is like super, that's a super powerful, it does something to our lizard brains, and so it's powerful, but it's also a little scary, and I'm a little bit concerned about what that's doing to our brains.

[music]

Harrison Mooney
We'll get back to our Reality Check: Live! discussion in just a moment. This live event was part of our Reality Check journalism project that was launched last year, and which is funded through donations raised by our readers. As a non-profit journalism outlet, The Tyee relies on contributions from its members, who we call Builders, to pay for our reporting. These Tyee Builders allow our small and nimble team to produce original paywall-free journalism that you won't find anywhere else. If you're not already a Tyee Builder, consider joining. You'll receive tax receipts for your contributions, along with our special Builders-only newsletter. Plus, monthly and annual donors get exclusive Tyee merchandise. Best of all, you'll help to strengthen and grow our team of fierce, tough-minded journalists. Head over to support.thetyee.ca to find out more. That's support dot the t y e e dot c a. Now back to the episode.

[music]

Harrison Mooney
Yes, speaking of scary, I wanted to ask you about all the threats and the harassment. Like, OK, I've been writing on the internet since like 2008, I'm very used to death threats, you know. I've gotten a lot. When I used to write a column for The Guardian during the London Olympics, they asked for, like, a Vancouver columnist who would just kind of, like, be snarky, you know, and satirize the London Games, really take the piss, you know. And so I did this for a week and every day I'd get hundreds of death threats, and they were weird, because they, like, you, even in writing, you could tell they were British, you know? It'd be like, ‘are you done throwing rattles from your pram? I'll kill you, John from Sussex,’ you know, like it was.. it was strange. This

Rachel Gilmore
Now I'm curious about, like, death threats from around the world, you know?

Harrison Mooney
It had a real international flavor. It was like a death threat, but very European.

Rachel Gilmore
Why does that feel classier?

Harrison Mooney
I learned a bunch of new words. But what was weird about that one was, you know, especially when they would say where they were from. You know, it was far away, and so it wasn't actually that frightening to me. You know, the first one, it was like that's a real death threat, and then when it's like 100 like none of these people are coming, they're just sending me emails, but then during the convoy, you know, I'm gonna say a Nazi truck just kind of idled in front of my house for like five minutes, and I mean that was the last time I wrote about anything that anyone would be mad about. I just was like, I'm a memoirist now. I think, like, I just all write about my own life and how sad it was. So, I guess, I guess, yeah. Sometimes I see what you go through, and honestly, like all of you guys just being public-facing in a way that sometimes I'm not, and I wonder, how you find the resolve to continue doing this work amid these threats, amid what I assume are the same racist emails that I get. How do you find the resolve to keep doing it?

Rachel Gilmore
You're asking me on a tough day. There is a yeah, I can't say exactly what happened, because unfortunately if I say it, it puts me in more danger, which is super cool, but I just like yesterday found something out that's kind of blowing up my whole life and putting me in the most danger I've been in yet, which is really fun, but honestly, OK, this is where I get really corny, but it's just actually how I feel, so I have to be corny because it's - I'm just a corny person, I guess. Honestly, what keeps me going is I think about an individual trans kid in Alberta who just got told they can't play on a sports team because the premier is trying to distract from privatizing health care and shit, so she acts like the biggest threat to your kids right now is that one child playing on a volleyball team, and I just think about how alone that kid must feel, and I think about, you know, a South Asian dude who's working at Tim Horton’s and dealing with racist vitriol every single day, because you know somehow that's become normalized, and how he probably feels really alone, and I remember that in journalism school we were told, and again, corny, but to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, and I really, every time I feel like I want to stop or feel scared, I think about all those people who feel like someone knows they're worth protecting, and who feels a little bit less alone when they see a story that I do, and that is 100 per cent why I do this, and it's why I don't ever want to stop, because there have to be people out there, and it's why I want more people to do this work, because it's I don't want those people to feel alone.

Jen St. Denis
Yeah, I just want to emphasize that Rachel and I are not doing this work because we're like chasing Nazis, like, we're not going out for the adrenaline thrill ride of, like, trying, like, it's, we're not doing it on a whim, we're doing it because we are seeing that this is a trend that is happening without out of our control that is really influencing Canadian politics and society right now, and I think we're both horrified by it. I certainly don't want to live in a world where racism is normal, where transphobia is normal. I have friends and family who are trans. I just don't.. I don't want to live in a world where, you know, we're pretending or we're believing a lie that Residential School abuse didn't happen. I don't want to go backwards, so we're not.. I. Yeah, so I just, I just want to ground us, and like, we're not, we're not like thrills, or we're a little bit thrill-seekers, maybe our brains have to be a little bit visual investigation, which I also had to Rachel's visual investigation. I also spent so much time looking at shoes and pants, that was, like, amazing. Yeah, we're a little bit thrilled, thrill-seekers, but we're not, we're not going out and looking for that, we, it is bubbling up in our, in our politics and in our society, and so we all need to be aware and really countering it, and I think that's also why we're doing that work, so that you all can kind of just be more aware and call it out when you see it, and that is, there's a huge amount of people who want to fight against this, and we see that, I see that in my audiences all the time as well,

Rachel Gilmore
And if we didn't do these stories, where would CBC’s Fifth Estate get their next piece on active clubs? Sorry.

Harrison Mooney
Salty. Here's a question from Slido: How do you manage the Trump conundrum, in which reporting on the bad things bad people do raises their profile and lets them dominate the media cycle? You know, whenever you guys are talking, you mentioned the names of guys I've never heard of, and then you know if I Google them later, like, oh, Nazi, so I get it. Yeah, you know what, it raises the profile. How do you handle that?

Rachel Gilmore
All right, I'll do it, I It's honestly one of the.. it's a really difficult thing, but I'm trying to remember, because there's.. there's actually been some sort of.. I think scholarship on this, and yeah, you, it's hard. It's really hard to know to find the line between platforming and exposing. We know that unmasking neo-Nazis is one of the main ways that they actually are spurred to leave the movement. It's because they have to face their friends and family that they've hidden, hopefully they've had to hide this side of themselves from, and they're kind of confronted with the reality of these communities and their beliefs, because I think it's easy to feel like you're in this meme-fueled world, especially with the Nick Fuentes and stuff, and you kind of realize, oh shit, what I'm saying actually has, you know, societal ramifications, and actually hurts people. Also, I think with the rise of alt-tech, these guys, they blow up without us. So I think that rather than letting them write a false narrative about themselves, which they are very adept at doing, using platforms like Rumble, which is a right-wing, you know, a free speech YouTube, or, you know, like Kick, where they can live stream in all kinds of gnarly ways. There's just like, there's these companion social media sites, and platforms, so like these guys can find each other and can blow up and can have community and can make money, and they don't necessarily need any help from us, but when we cover them, we can contextualize them. We can give someone an article or a video to turn to where they can say, ‘Hey, oh, I didn't know that guy from Juno News was liking slurs for South Asian people, and is now reporting on immigration. I didn't know that.” And you know, and it just like helps you to contextualize who these people are, and like the things that they're saying and doing, and so honestly, I think that we're fighting against a current right now with the direction and the algorithmic rewarding that these guys get, and we're just exposing who they actually are, and I think it's important, because in their circles, these guys are big, and the stuff they're doing, people need to be aware of, like these guys are literally trying to find ways to enmesh themselves in conservative party conventions and circles and stuff. It's really important. Sorry,

Jen St. Denis
And they're succeeding,

Rachel Gilmore
And they're succeeding. So we have to tell you who these people are and what they're doing before they get the chance to pretend that there's something that they're not, and they can, you know, weasel their way in.

Jen St. Denis
They code-switch as well, they like talking a different way when they're at a Conservative Party convention versus when they're talking to their followers.

Rachel Gilmore
Well, when Daniel Tyrie from the Dominion Society, this re-migration group that is essentially advocating for the mass deportation of pretty much non-white people from Canada, he was. he did an interview with Candice Malcolm on Juno News, and you know he still managed to say a lot of fucking wild stuff, like she asked, ‘Do you consider yourself a white nationalist?’ And he said, ‘I'm a Canadian nationalist, but I mean the ethnic continuity I'm talking about for Canada technically those could be called white people.’ So it's like, OK, so you're a white nationalist with like a really roundabout way, but you know, she didn't do the bare minimum research, as Luke LeBrun from Press Progress exposed, because he reached out to her and pointed out, hey, did you know that they literally have the great replacement theory, you know, the one that inspired a mass shooter in Buffalo on their website, saying that to understand the movement we're pushing for, you have to understand this, and she was like, ‘Oh no, he really sold a different version of what he was doing in the interview,’ and it's like, yeah, that's the fucking point, and that's why you have to do your research, so you can contextualize that, because he's trying to bring people, he's trying to give them an entry point to his radical movement by presenting it as more reasonable or more, you know, normal than it actually is, and that's how people end up falling into these groups. So, yeah, anyway, sorry, I went off on a rant, but

Harrison Mooney
It's a good rant.

Mo Amir
Yeah, I, and I completely value this idea of unmasking Nazis or these other movements that are very toxic and harmful, and I'm not an investigative reporter, right, so I'm not doing that type of work, but I often get this people, and in my circles will ask me, ‘Well, why don't you go hard on Dallas Brodie and Tara Armstrong, because they are politicians, they sit in the B.C. Legislature, they say some pretty awful things,’ and for me it's like if I focused on those two people and all the awful things they said, it would be literally every day, and they are so low level at this point that me doing that almost validates them with the people that they're trying to be validated with, so on one level, like this is where I struggle. It's just like I do call them out from time to time, but you can't necessarily do it every time when they are on a lower level. They are already public figures, there's no unmasking needed there. But I know, Jen, you've done really great work in terms of unmasking some of the people behind them, which I think is very valuable,

Jen St. Denis
And there's tons of stuff that I just ignore that they say, where I'm like, 'Wow, I'm horrified by that,’ but yeah, I just don't want to. They're looking for the media attention, so it's a really.. it is sometimes when you get to the level of politicians who are like in the Legislature, they have a.. they have like a pulpit every single day to say stuff in that is privileged in the Legislature. You do have to, I think that you do have to pick your battles, but it's, it's a really hard line to walk.

Harrison Mooney
I've got one more question here from Slido for you guys. I like Slido. This thing's cool. This is, I'm doing Slido for all my events after this, and there will be other events, because I'm doing such a good job. Thanks. This event's really about me. Here's another question: How can I help my kids who are being raised in this age of mistrust and misinformation to be media literate and critical thinkers? You know, there's one thing for us to sit here and say, oh, we're figuring it out. We're exposing…

Jen St. Denis
I have two teenage sons. They're actually doing a lot in our public school, our Vancouver high school. Their teacher, one of their socials teachers, did a big unit, and they showed them Adolescence from Netflix. They showed them another really good documentary that was about the manosphere. Yes, Louis Theroux. So that's fantastic to hear that their teachers are doing that. We talk about it a lot in our house. My son and my one son and his friend, like those kids, are so woke, like it's almost painful. But the scary thing for me as a parent is that they know, they know who all these people are. They know who Charlie Kirk is, who Andrew Tate is. They're, because they're memes, and so that's scary, that they don't think they're cool, but they know who they are, and that's to me, that's pretty scary as a parent. But I think that the education piece that's happening in schools, that at least my kids are getting, is great, and it kind of does need to come from someone other than a parent. So that's a good place to start.

Harrison Mooney
Mo, do you have any thoughts about media literacy, literacy in children?

Mo Amir
You want childless Mo Amir to tell people how to parent their kids?

Harrison Mooney
Tell me, I'm totally.. I think it's..

Mo Amir
I think it's a.. it's a challenge, right? And it's the thing is, even when we kind of catch up and create strategies, the technology moves in such an accelerating way that you just have to, you know, be a very big part of your kid's life and talk about what they're seeing online. I mean, we probably had very similar issues with, you know, pro wrestling or other things we saw on TV, and our parents trying to contextualize it, or, you know, blocking or restricting certain things, but I don't know if there's like a catch-all solution. I do think it is holistic. I think there definitely needs to be media literacy in schools, as Jen has pointed out, talking to your kids about what they're seeing online. I would also say just it, and I'm not one of those ban-cell-phones-in-schools person, but I do think that all of us, including adults, need to restrict the amount of time we spend on our phones when we talk about third spaces and creating community, like we eat up a lot of our own time just being on the phone, and that can feel very social, but ultimately it doesn't have the same psychological or just spiritual reward of being in a community, and that's why we're doing this in person, as opposed to a digital or virtual event, right?

Harrison Mooney
Should I, should I be wrapped?

Audience Member
Parasocial

Mo Amir
Parasocial, yeah, that's the word. Yeah,

Harrison Mooney
Jeanette, should I wrap it up or can I ask another big question? Yeah, OK. I want to ask you guys about identity, because one thing that stresses me out, honestly, it's just being Black in the world, but being Black in journalism, and knowing that if I say certain things, then I'm going to get a different response than say, if you say certain things, but you're also going to get a different response than Mo, and I mean, you know, all of us have, you know, a particular identity that I think leaves us vulnerable to certain attacks, leaves us, you know, vulnerable to attacks from these sorts of people, and I do wonder if that ever comes into play in terms of, you know, who you put on your show, in terms of what you write about, you know, understanding that I can be attacked for who I am specifically. It's a big question, but if anybody wants to answer how your identity impacts the work that you do,

Rachel Gilmore
I mean, they make like really messed up videos of me and stuff that are pretty disturbing. Yeah, it's.. I don't know, I mean, the misogyny is pretty crazy, but I sometimes use it like I kind of like to lean into it sometimes and use it so that they underestimate me, and you know, like, I'll give you an example. I did a testimony, I testified at a parliamentary committee on Russian disinformation campaigns, and I started out my speech by saying all right, well, this is, and I mean, I'm also just kind of goofy, so this is sort of just how I talk, but I was like, you know, this is a really big topic, and I have some big feelings about it, and all of the right-wingers, like Viva Frei, if you guys know who that is, he's like, anyway, weird guy, he ran for the PPC once, I think, like way long ago, and now he lives in Florida, so that probably gives you like a general sense, but he clipped my testimony because of that thing off the bat that he knew his like crowd would go feral for, but then I immediately pivoted to talking about how these Telegram channels that I had been monitoring during the convoy suddenly shifted when Russia invaded Ukraine to pro-Russia sentiment, and how interesting I found that, and you know that meant that all kinds of people who never would have heard me say that heard me say that because I said the bimbo-y thing off the top, and they fucking took it hook line and sinker, so I don't know, you can use it. You have to use, honestly, like just really quickly. One thing I wanted to say that I didn't shoot, I'm shoehorning it in here a little bit, but like you kind of have to take these people's power away by like using their own tricks against them, like you have to show that the emperor has no clothes, you have to, you have to make fun of them, not the people who are falling down these rabbit holes, but they're the people they're worshiping, you have to show them this person thinks you're stupid and is treating you like you're stupid, and you're not, and I know that, and this person is a weird loser, and not the kind of person you want to follow, like, just look at them, because the thing is, is these guys, like, when we make them out to be like these all-powerful scary dudes, they're often, as Jen says, just weird little guys, and, like, I honestly think there's so much value in mocking these guys, and Kat Abughazaleh, who ran for Congress in Illinois, said this to me on my podcast once, that, like, that's one of her key things that she uses against these, like, Fox News bros and stuff. You have to make fun of them, you have to make them uncool, because at the end of the day, they're like cult leaders, and that's why people are following them. You have to show that the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

Mo Amir
I think that's what happened to Pierre Poilievre.

Rachel Gilmore
Yeah,

Mo Amir
I mean, it was - he was this big, strong man, tough guy, whatever. And he, at the end of the day, he was just cringe, and he's kind of lost that mojo. And once you realize the script he was writing, I mean, he was very akin to Ron DeSantis. This right there was a lot of hype there, and then suddenly the emperor has no clothes. I mean, the

Jen St. Denis
Kettlebells didn't care. I want to get everybody back on track. The question was about your identity.

Rachel Gilmore
Oh, identity, yeah. I shoehorned. I'm sorry,

Mo Amir
I just had to get a Pierre Poilievre thing in there. No, for me, honestly, like, yeah, it absolutely plays a role, and when I think about commentary that I want to make, it is a factor, maybe that makes me a coward on certain things, but I just think you think about, you know, what are the repercussions, and is it worth kind of getting into a certain battle on different issues, and absolutely, you know, there's going to be, if Rachel and I comment on one thing, if it's one issue, maybe I get the worst of it. If it's another issue, maybe she gets the worst of it, like that identity absolutely plays into the type of harassment or just general response that you're going to get, like I think it's just an unfortunate reality,

Jen St. Denis
And as a middle-aged white woman, I'm totally invisible, and I don't have to deal with any of this shit. It's a superpower, and so I try to use my role, you know, to tackle those uncomfortable subjects that a younger journalist or journalist of colour might get a lot of blow back to, and that's one of the reasons I've leaned into this newish beat for me so hard, and then also that I'm like trying to be an ally, and also like support other journalists who are doing this work, so that's kind of the role I see myself playing right now.

Harrison Mooney
Yeah, we're about done the talk-back portion, but I feel like while you have microphones in your hand. This might be a time to plug something. Do you want to tell people about your Patreon account or your YouTube account? How do we.. where do we find and follow all your, all your various?

Rachel Gilmore
Everywhere. I'm on Patreon, Substack, YouTube, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok. I had to make a Facebook account because someone was stealing my videos and putting them on Facebook and pretending to be me, so I got that, got that one nuked. And then I know I post on Facebook too. Um, yeah, you can find me basically anywhere, but if you want to subscribe, um, the places where I actually make money are on Patreon, Substack, and also YouTube is a great place to watch my videos, because that's the only place I get paid for your eyeballs. So, if you're watching on TikTok, and you felt like maybe just like playing the YouTube video in the background or something, that also really helps,

Harrison Mooney
Mo?

Mo Amir
if you're one of the few people that still have us cable TV, please watch and PVR my show. It's called This Is Vancolour. It's on CHECK TV Thursdays at nine o'clock You can also just search for This Is Vancolour for full episodes and YouTube clips as well. I'm on CBC every Thursday at 4:30 as well, with Gloria Macarenko and On the Coast, or actually, that's 4:10, and I don't know, find me on social media @VanColour.

Harrison Mooney
and Jen?

Jen St. Denis
I want to plug our staff who put on this event: Jeanette, our publisher, who organized

Harrison Mooney
Absolutely,

Jen St. Denis
and all of our other staff, Kimberly, Carla, and Kayla, our photographer. Thank you so much for just having this idea to bring everybody together in person and get us out of our online world. It's been great to hang out with all of you.

Harrison Mooney
That was our Reality Check: Live! panel discussion. Thanks again to Rachel Gilmore, Jen St. Denis, and Mo Amir. Check out more of their writing on our website at thetyee.ca. A big thank you to Simon Fraser University for hosting us. A Better Life Foundation for hosting the after party, and our sponsors: Faculty Brewing, Enoteca Wines, and the Canadian Media Guild, and also a big thanks to Francis Baptiste, who played for the live crowd. If you enjoyed this discussion and would like us to host future events, maybe in your town, let us know at [email protected] The Tyee is a non-profit reader- and listener-funded journalism organization, all of which is made possible thanks to the support of our Tyee Builders. Head over to support.thetyee.ca to sign up, so we can keep publishing journalism in the public interest. That's support dot the t y e e dot c a. Today's bonus episode was hosted by me, Harrison Mooney, and produced and engineered by Jacob Boon. Our music is by Brian Binema. Join us again soon.