If TikTok News Is the Future, Rachel Gilmore Is Living It

Rachel Gilmore has had a “weird couple of years.”

It started in 2021 when she noticed journalists like the Washington Post’s Dave Jorgenson and the Toronto Star’s Evelyn Kwong making TikTok videos for their outlets.

Gilmore turned to her editors at Global News and said, “We should do this.”

“They were like, ‘As long as you continue doing your other work, we’re not going to prevent you from doing this.’ And I was like, ‘Excellent.’”

The Global News TikTok account grew quickly, Gilmore told The Tyee, but one year later, she — along with the Hill Times’ Erica Ifill and the Toronto Star’s Saba Eitizaz — became the target of an online harassment campaign consisting of relentless hate-filled and threatening emails, mostly sent from Proton email accounts. Gilmore even had the Canadian Security Intelligence Service show up at her apartment to ask about the threats.

In response to growing complaints from journalists in the industry, open letters on behalf of newsroom leaders and 48 news organizations demanded action from the federal government and police to protect reporters from online hate and harassment.

In October 2022, Global News decided to take a hiatus from TikTok. In March 2023, Gilmore was laid off. Global cited restructuring efforts.

Between the layoff and her next gig, Gilmore “just kept making TikToks” on her personal account.

Today, Gilmore’s gone indie: she works as an investigative journalist for advertising industry watchdog Check My Ads by day, and as a news content creator by night — well, between 5 and 7 p.m. on a good day. Watch any video on her TikTok profile and you’ll see her explaining the day’s big story, debunking disinformation or fearlessly calling out alt-right media.

@rachel_gilmore

🚨NEW: Far-right influencer Lauren Chen was just hauled before a parliamentary committee to testify about her alleged role in a Russian propaganda operation. She founded TENET media, which allegedly hired right-wing influencers to spread Russian messaging. Things went…badly:

♬ original sound - Rachel Gilmore

While she has just shy of 100,000 followers on TikTok and has three million likes across her videos, she still doesn’t consider it a sustainable career — not yet anyway. TikTok’s compensation program, the Creator Fund, still isn’t available in Canada.

With the federal government’s recent decision to ban TikTok from operating out of Canada, citing national security concerns — and the United States’ recent efforts to ban the app altogether — TikTok continues to be a shaky ground for journalists to put down their roots.

Still, Gilmore is one of many diving into the evolving world of short-form, vertical-video journalism. She is also one of many people facing sexist attacks to do it.

We caught up with Gilmore about the rise of the content-creator-journalist, her personal troll-preventing measures, gaining audiences’ trust and more.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

The Tyee: When did you notice news content creation could be a viable career path for you? Is it feasible long-term?

Rachel Gilmore: In some ways it still isn’t, but I have hope that if I'm willing to knuckle down and get creative, I can make it into that. I'm lucky I like my job with Check My Ads. They pay me a fair wage. They’re supportive — they have no involvement with my personal TikToks whatsoever. That's a freedom not a lot of people have when they have a day job alongside doing TikToks. I hate calling it a day job, because I'm passionate about my Check My Ads work too.

I don't see “day job” as having a negative connotation. In creative spaces, many people are familiar with that balance.

I’ve been thinking about how to make it more viable. At some point maybe I'm going to want to have kids. I'm going to want more work-life balance. Right now, I haven't been able to make it something I can live off of. But I'll get asked to appear on panels or speaking gigs and those are often paid.

I also got my first brand deal a while ago. The campaign was cancelled, but it was a big brand, so that was cool. I also turn down a lot of deals because I don't want to compromise my ethics. I don't want to enable Google AdSense, because that would make me a beneficiary of their business [as someone who reports on the ad tech industry].

I get a lot of people asking me how they can support my journalism. Right now, I don't have anywhere to direct them, so I'm thinking of setting up a Patreon or a Ghost account.

I'm fine with it. Because, personally, I don't judge influencers. Some people will call me a TikToker or an influencer, and they mean it in a disparaging way. It just means that I understand the future of communication. Journalism is a craft, not so much a medium. If you're adhering to journalistic principles, you can do it in any form.

It makes me sad when I see mainstream folks leaning into that. It closes doors when people perceive you that way — I'm not a regular panellist on politics shows where they have journalists on all the time. But that's OK. I have my own thing going on, and it's a gamble, but I'm betting that this is the future.

First and foremost, they should do it. A lot of newsrooms are scared of jumping onto TikTok or Instagram Reels because of that connotation of being influencers. They perceive it to be this trashy medium that isn't quite journalism. They shouldn't be afraid of letting people have personality, because that's what people crave. Because if the audience feels like they know who their news is coming from, that can help them practise critical thinking, rather than pretending the person they're hearing from is objective.

We know being an online journalist comes with a disproportionate amount of abuse online, especially for women, people of colour and other vulnerable identities. Can you give a sense of the intensity of what you have faced?

Between [the email campaign in 2022] and covering the “Freedom Convoy,” I started learning about Diagolon, the far-right extremist group in Canada. They became obsessive about me — one member took a picture of me while I was walking down the street and posted it on a forum saying where I was going. You could see what I was wearing. I ended up having to go into a mall to buy a different hoodie so that I could go home without being nervous about someone following me.

Women and people of colour are disproportionately targeted by these kinds of campaigns. If newsrooms’ responses are “Log off, shut down, don't engage” — you're doing what these people want to achieve by harassing you, which is make you leave the industry and have fewer women and people of colour with loud voices online.

There are people who think they know more about me than they do. A lot of extremists affiliated with Diagolon have created a serious caricature of who they believe me to be that is very removed from the person I am. The leader of this group sits on his livestreams and makes things up about me that are demonstrably false. Conspiratorial, extremist, hateful people making up gross things about me, my sex life, all kinds of things.

Once I stopped working at Global and was laid off, I actually felt much better, because I was able to not only push back on these people, but I didn't feel like I was being victim-blamed. Oddly enough, it cooled down a lot.

What do you make of the industry’s response to the targeting and harassment of journalists by HonestReporting Canada?

Journalists are being failed by the organizations that are supposed to defend us. Honest Reporting is primarily targeting people of colour in newsrooms any time they show an ounce of humanity towards Palestinians.

I speak to people in major newsrooms, and you hear about the impact these pressure campaigns have, because unfortunately, in the current day where newsrooms are under-resourced, sometimes executives don't take the time to consider whether it's in good faith or bad. It’s messed up, watching people lose their courage. If press freedom organizations are too afraid to stand up to an organization defending an ideology, you're not defending press freedom at all.

In the aftermath of Global, how do you respond to or prevent the harassment and abuse when you have no newsroom behind you? Are there any safety measures that you put in place for yourself?

Definitely. I used to post Instagram stories when I was at a bar or restaurant. Not now. I ask my friends not to tag me in anything. I’m very careful about giving out my address. If anyone in my apartment is taking a picture, I make sure they're not pointing out the window.

As much as all of this, frankly, feels paranoid, it takes one person to figure it out, and then I have to move. I've done research on the harassment of journalists who have had to move. Sometimes it blows my mind, because I'll see a renowned news anchor posting a picture about something they’ve seen on their way to work. I could never post that. And frankly, I'm a little worried you posted that.

There are some lessons I've learned over the last two years. Part of it was that the more I exposed what I was dealing with, the more people saw me as someone who was heavily impacted by it. I stand by my decision to speak out, but I also don't want that to be the only thing I'm known for.

How did you grow credibility with your audience as a trusted news source?

By being consistent, adhering to journalistic principles, providing sources for the stuff I say. I do a lot of original journalism. There's a brand of TikToker that just reads other people's reporting, and that's a contentious issue. If I'm leaning heavily on someone else's reporting, I either reach out to them or make sure I'm adding something of value.

I think people trust someone if they feel like they know a little bit about you. So, I've been vulnerable on my platforms. I've shared personal things, especially with respect to the harassment. Because it's mutual, right? I'm trusting them to receive information I'm sharing, and they’re trusting me to be honest and ethical.

@rachel_gilmore

🚨NEW: Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has actually moved ahead with this. Here’s what’s going on — and why you shouldn’t feel hopeless:

♬ original sound - Rachel Gilmore

Has your TikTok account been affected by the Meta news ban?

That's one of the perks of being on my own, is that Meta is utilizing the Canadian government's definition of journalism or news based on the legislation. A few of the key tenets are that you have to employ at least two people — I do not. I encourage individual journalists to use their personal platforms in that way. Although then there's the other considerations like Meta down-ranking political content.

When you don't have a support system behind you, it can be a slippery slope. Do you experience any burnout? What have been your best practices to save your mental health?

I have an app blocker so there is no late-night doomscrolling for me. It's easier to avoid triggers if you're not reading an onslaught of criticism about everything about you. It also forces me to get my work done earlier. I work out a lot now. When you're on a treadmill, you can't doomscroll. I read a lot of books. It helps improve my focus, which then helps me get through my days faster.

The thing for me is that scrolling is part of working. It's easy to justify when you're a journalist, because you're consuming information that could be the story you tell the next day. I still don't have it figured out.

What tips would you have for anybody else who wants to do this? Is it worth it?

I feel like people are going to roll their eyes: literally, just do it. I look back at my old TikToks and I'm like, “Some of the quality is rough and some of my makeup is rough,” but if you let that stop you from posting, you're never going to get to the place where you're proud of your work. Make sure you're giving people information they need to form their own opinion, not just your opinion.

If it's worth it? I think so. It's been some of the most rewarding work in my life. I get to tell stories my newsroom wouldn't have. I rarely had people come up to me when I worked for Global, for CTV News, and tell me my work impacted them. But since doing TikToks, I've had people come up to me and say they feel seen because of my work.

We need more people in journalism for whom it's not about seeing their name in print or their face in a TikTok, but about telling those stories. I would like to be able to make more money from it, but it fills my cup.