There are real concerns about misinformation and disinformation in Canada. A national poll in 2019 suggests nine in ten Canadians thought they had fallen for fake news (Thompson, 2019). Canadian journalists and news organisations share these concerns. There was real – and pronounced – fears about foreign actors disrupting the 2019 federal election with disinformation. Experts and election officials warned about the potential spread of disinformation during the political campaign, and the federal government tightened rules about online advertising and invested millions of dollars in security and intelligence efforts aimed at combatting any foreign meddling in Canada’s general election. Additionally, the Canadian Journalism Foundation launched a public service campaign aimed at encouraging Canadians to critically evaluate news media so they could spot the difference between legitimate journalism and fake news being spread on social media. During the 2019 federal election, CBC News offered Canadians a “chat bot” to help news consumers spot so-called fake news. The public and journalists armed themselves for an information battle that never really materialised.
A 2020 study from the Digital Democracy Project, based out of McGill University in Montreal, studied the effect of misinformation on the 2019 Canadian federal election and came to the following conclusion:
Our finding is that disinformation did not play a major role in the 2019 Canadian election campaign. This is consistent with the findings of many other investigations by journalists, academics, government agencies and officials, and the private sector. That is not to say there were no instances of disinformation, but what there was generally did not appear co-ordinated and had limited impact. (The Digital Democracy Project, 2020)
This view was supported by a veteran Canadian journalist interviewed for this study:
Most news organizations, the CBC and I think The Globe and Mail and The [Toronto] Star and some others thought that misinformation and disinformation would be a big issue in the (2019) election campaign. And so, had someone assigned to that beat. And I think other publications did, too. But I think we discovered that there, in fact, wasn’t very much. And the studies I’ve seen have shown that there wasn’t an awful lot and that the biggest distributors of disinformation and misinformation are political parties and candidates. And so, they (journalists) didn’t really have an awful lot to do.
Despite the recent example of the 2019 election, many of the journalists or newsroom leaders interviewed for this research worried about misinformation and disinformation; however, none of them detailed any sophisticated mechanisms or technology being used to counter the problem. Many of the journalists talked about being sceptical of information originating from social media platforms, and special attention is paid to checking the veracity of social media content. Journalists detailed procedures such as labelling and identifying information from social media, and verifying information with a second or third source before reporting it. CBC News’ journalistic standards and practices are clear:
“Material that originates from a non-CBC source is clearly identified as such. Before text, image, video or audio is published, we try to verify the information with a second source. There may be times when a third source is required” (CBC 2020)
Moreover, a number of Canadian news organisations have responded to misinformation and disinformation with a focus on fact-checking. No journalists mentioned training aimed specifically at spotting misinformation.
