We need to talk about Rachel

Because our democracy is not going to make it through the next years without strong journalists.

Let me begin by stating the obvious: these thoughts are mine alone. They do not speak for my employers nor any organization with which I am affiliated.

They are personal, and they are, at this moment, angry.

I want to talk to you about Rachel Gilmore. The young woman I knew. What she has become. What has happened to her.

Listen to Rachel’s story here:

Rachel Gilmore came into my life not as a byline or a controversy but as an intern. I was still the boss of an Indigenous newsroom then. Rachel was in J-school at Carleton University. Students in that program are dispatched into newsrooms for a few weeks each year to gain practical experience. These placements are highly sought after—not only for the training but for what they might become. CBC, CTV, the Globe and Mail — the most coveted destinations. They have legacy, reach, and back then in 2016, they still had a decent budget.

Rachel chose none of them.

Rachel phoned me with an unusual request. She wanted to complete her placement at the Indigenous newsroom where I worked at that time.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission had released its Calls to Action a year earlier. In Call to Action No. 86, the TRC urged journalism to do what it had long resisted: reckon with the country’s colonial past. It called on media education programs to require all students to learn the history of Indigenous peoples, the legacy of residential schools, and the foundational principles of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The request was clear—teach future journalists the truths they are expected to report.

Rachel was not going to wait for her school to figure that out. (But kudos to Carleton University’s J-school, it’s doing so) That is why Rachel was calling me.

She was a fair-skinned, red-haired young woman, and, significantly, non-Indigenous. That was her reason for coming. But it was also the reason she hesitated. She didn’t want to take up a spot that might otherwise go to an Indigenous student.

I explained that our company offered only paid internships to Indigenous applicants. We had all the time in the world for a non-Indigenous journalist who wanted to learn. But if she came, it would be unpaid. Rachel was delighted. In that moment, in Rachel, I witnessed one of the most authentic and hopeful acts of reconciliation I have seen in my life — not from an institution, not from a policy, but from a student who understood the spirit of the TRC's Call to Action 86 and acted on it, herself, modestly and humbly.

She stayed with us for a week. Then life, as it does, took us in different directions.

My own career has been many things—managing newsrooms, a desire to write and create. I am an oddly-shaped puzzle piece in an industry where I always almost fit but then don’t always snap in tightly. But there is one thing I promise you everyone will agree on at my funeral, even my enemies: I have excelled in advancing the case for press freedom at every available table. Recently, while updating my CV, I realized I’d intervened in five press freedom cases before the Supreme Court of Canada. I serve on multiple boards. I’ve quietly helped, in some small way, nearly every journalist in this country who’s been unfairly arrested or detained. Usually, by begging lawyers to take on their cases pro-bono.

I do this because journalism matters—not in some abstract civic sense, but in the daily, oxygen-providing way democracy depends on. Pick any major issue. Tariffs. Disinformation. Trump. Elections. Without reporters, you wouldn’t know what you’re watching unfold. None of us claim we do it perfectly. We’re not robots. (And as AI is proving robots are not perfect either.)

I’ve made mistakes. I’ve had to learn how to be a better boss. I’m constantly learning - even after 20 years in the business- how to be a better journalist. But I’ve always been transparent about those mistakes. That, too, is part of this work.

Enough about me. I am telling you this because I see in Rachel a life shaped very much like the one I own.

I reconnected with Rachel a couple of years ago. She reminded me of who she was—that non-Indigenous girl who once interned at APTN. This time, she was interviewing me for a paper she was contributing to on sexual harassment in the industry. After that, I kept an eye on her career. She had grown into a clear, public advocate for press freedom in her own way. Instead of courts and arrests, she was pushing back against the online threats that began, and never quite ended, for those who dared to report the news—especially women of colour, women with conviction, and women who refused to shrink.

I don’t know for sure because I never asked her. But I think that’s what compelled Rachel to report on uncomfortable terrain: disinformation, extremism, incel culture. Her reporting was precise, intelligent, and unflinching. But she also, inevitably, became a target. Not because of what she got wrong, but because of what she got right—and because she had the audacity to be good at her job while also being, let’s just say it, striking, articulate, and fearless.

And so, the campaign to tear her down began. Trolls comb over her every word, hoping for errors, twist and purposely misrepresent her, they invade her private life, show up with cameras and photograph her walking home, film her on dates. They repost these images online and laugh when she looks scared. And they try to discredit her through half-truths amplified into myths.

The trolls know if they can discredit Rachel Gilmore, they can discredit any woman with the temerity to speak the truth in this business. That is the point. And those of us who’ve been paying attention should have seen it for what it was.

Which is why I am furious that CTV caved.

Rachel became a symbol of the threats journalists face. Now, she is a symbol of what it means when institutions fail to defend journalists. She stood up, and then she stood alone. And when it mattered most, the people who should have stood behind her... didn’t.

We are all complicit if we pretend this was simply a staffing decision. It wasn’t. It was a message. And if we don’t push back, that message will be heard loudest by the next generation entering this field..

They will hear: Be good, but not too good. Be visible but not too visible. Report, but do not confront.

What I hope they hear instead—what I hope they remember—is this: Rachel Gilmore walked past the gates of legacy media before she ever had to. She chose integrity over ambition. She took responsibility where institutions stalled. She stood, and kept standing.

Our democracy is not going to make it through the next years without strong journalists.

Thank you for speaking up Rachel, and not letting this go quietly.

We owe you better.