On February 10, I met Jonathan Montpetit, Senior Investigative Journalist at CBC. Operating at a national level, he works on social movements and democracy — his ‘beat,’ as he describes it — focusing on far-right activism, populist politics and the intersection of tech and politics. Over coffee, we were able to talk about the vitality of investigative journalism in modern democracies.
The following interview has been shortened and edited for clarity.
Aurelien Lechantre for the McGill Daily (MD): As a national investigative journalist, how do you work? What is it like to investigate a right-wing activist movement for example?
Jonathan Montpetit (JM): Most of my research starts online, not surprisingly: I monitor a lot of different Facebook pages, Twitter feeds, Telegram chats, that kind of thing, and I try to get a sense of how certain themes, policy issues are being talked about, and then as much as possible, I try to, from that research phase, go and talk to people.
MD: Do you go to movements presenting yourself as a CBC investigative journalist to interview them?
JM: One of the things that journalists avoid, whenever possible, is hiding our identities. I’m accountable for my behaviour as a journalist: I don’t want to trick you, I want to hear what you have to say. That’s kind of like our main approach. What happens sometimes though, and I think particularly in investigative journalism, is that you’re trying to get information that would not otherwise be public, and there are people, institutions, or organizations, who are actively preventing you from trying to make that information public.
If you believe that information is of public interest, that it’s essential that it be made public, then you can use different methods to gather that information. For instance, I did a story about a political movement of Christian fundamentalists in Canada. They were holding conferences, discussing their policies and strategies. They would not let me attend as a journalist, and so the next time, I simply bought a ticket, still in my name, and went unofficially. I had my recorder on me, paid attention to being discreet, and observed. However, there has to be a very, very high threshold for an investigative journalist to disguise their identity, because it should be our last resort. There have been some excellent examples of journalists disguising their identities and infiltrating right-wing extremist movements. On my part, the reporting I have done on right-wing groups has always been, “I’m John, I work for the CBC, can I talk to you?” and sometimes people accept. However, there’s an increasing suspicion of the media, and gaining that level of access has been increasingly difficult.
MD: Do you think this poses a threat to investigative journalism? Would you, as a journalist, have to take more and more risks for inquiries and hide your identity more frequently?
JM: I think there are general risks to being a journalist. You know, press freedom is not a straight line moving forward, and I think we’re at a moment where press freedom is certainly on its heels in a lot of different ways.
I think one of the threats to reporting on the far right that’s emerged over the last, four or five years is that there’s a very gendered and racialized way that a lot of these groups deal with media coverage of their activities. Many of my colleagues who, whether they are journalists of color or women or a sexual gender minority, face tremendous backlash online anytime they report on the far right, sometimes going as far as death threats and stalking.
I can deal with it because I work for a large news organization that has resources to protect its journalists. A lot of journalists work independently, and freelancers are a lot more vulnerable to that backlash. Pursuing journalism as a freelancer takes a tremendous amount of courage, but our information environment is richer because of the risks they take on a daily basis.
MD: You mentioned how you thought freedom of the press and journalism were on their heels today: do you think this applies to Canada? Do you think this backlash many journalists suffer from is increasing and poses a risk to journalists today?
JM: I’m a hopeless optimist when it comes to the future of journalism. However, I think there’s no question that journalism in Canada is at a moment of tremendous uncertainty: every journalist, every news organization in Canada has uncertain sources of revenue and is re-evaluating their relationship with audiences. In those uncertain moments, it is easier for some political actors to try to avoid the accountability mechanism that is the press. Because journalism as an institution is going through this period of change, our mechanisms of accountability are weakened and it’s easier for the powerful to do things with less of the pressures of transparency that the press imposes. For example, Meta has barred news links in Canada on all their platforms. Instagram, Whatsapp and Facebook’s millions of users in Canada are deprived of reliable information while misinformation spreads like wildfire.
MD: So would you say social media and the tech giants that handle them are a big threat to press freedom and investigative journalism?
JM: I would say that, if you look at how many news organizations are deciding to no longer post on X because they view it as hostile to their “raison d’être.” The recent decision by Meta to end fact-checking on posts, and explicit animosity towards fact-checkers, shows the fraught relationship between big tech and journalism. I think big tech companies see mainstream journalism as a competitor or a threat, and I think certainly in the comments made by Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, there are attempts to delegitimize mainstream journalism.
MD: And do you think the fact that the media relies partly on social media is a risk? Do you think there’s a need to change, to evolve from the revenue system that relies on ads for journalism to be preserved?
JM: While mainstream media had long relied on advertising as its prime source of revenue, social media has revolutionized the ad market. With the advertising revenue becoming less reliable, a growing number of media outlets are experimenting with a subscription-based model.
At CBC, colleagues of mine who work on the social media desk constantly have to monitor algorithm changes, as suddenly your audience can change radically. So the struggle for journalists is to both exploit the audience potential of social media without becoming overly reliant on social media.
MD: You mentioned how CBC was less affected by the ad-revenue system because of federal government funding. How does that align with the role of investigative journalism?
JM: I think one of the challenges of investigative journalism is that it’s resource heavy: it requires a lot of people, it can be expensive, and takes a long time. When the media market places the emphasis on producing content, investigative journalism can seem kind of crazy: who says, “I’m gonna employ these three people and they’re gonna produce one story every six months? This makes investigative journalism one of the first things to get cut. I think having a source of revenue that is independent of advertising has allowed CBC to commit to investigative journalism when other news organizations would not be able to.
MD: Do you think committing to investigative journalism is a priority today? Should it be?
JM: It is difficult for me to conceive of a flourishing liberal democracy without a robust culture of journalism. Maybe I just lack imagination, but I think liberal democracy thrives when you multiply mechanisms of accountability. And if you remove investigative journalism, you’re removing an accountability mechanism essential to democracy.
Investigative journalism should be part of our conception of how information flows in our society. If you suddenly were not to have that flow of information, you have citizens who are less informed, who know less about the consequences of public policy, who know less about the consequences of corporate power, who know less about what their politicians are up to.
MD: Is there anything you would like to add before winding up our exchange?
JM: I think the modern challenge for journalists is to grapple with the role of technology in the media, and to think creatively about technology: how can we use these new tools creatively to get more information, to build relationships and enhance our possibilities as journalists without relinquishing the human aspect of reporting.