The rapid rise and fall of the false rumor of Prime Minister Harper’s plan to abolish the Senate offers a revealing case study of the sophomoric irresponsibility of contemporary Canadian political journalism.

John Ivison writes for the National Post, sometimes as a columnist, sometimes as a reporter. His stories have a tendency to contain tantalizing previews of dramatic announcements, the news of which, we are always told, was surreptitiously whispered into his exclusive ear by a single unnameable courtier of some powerful person.

In a story posted late last night, Ivison claimed an anonymous “source” told him that Prime Minister Harper and Premier Brad Wall of Saskatchewan “are expected to appear together Friday to call for the abolition of the Senate.” Of this there was no further elaboration or detail; the remainder of the article comprised the usual padding of polls, trivia, scandal summaries, and other assorted filler one comes to expect from Senate-related coverage.

Ivison does not enjoy terribly high credibility as a gossip. Many of his past hot tips have amounted to less than nothing, including a rumor Harper would step down following a 2013 trip to Israel (“speculation abounds,” he assured) or that a gang of Ottawa prostitutes were “apparently” plotting a high-profile outing of their Tory clients.

He does not even have terribly high credibility as a gossip of stories relating to Saskatchewan and Senate abolishment. Almost exactly two years ago, Ivison wrote an article claiming a “senior government official” had told him Premier Wall was “set to introduce a constitutional amendment into the Saskatchewan legislature this October calling for the abolition of the Canadian Senate.” The story was promptly denied by the Premier’s office, and Ivison struggled to defend himself in a grasping column printed the following day.

Wall does support abolishing the Senate in theory, however, and Ivison’s scoop that the Prime Minister was going to use his summit with the Premier to throw support behind the cause was credulously repeated in headlines across the land. Early coverage explicitly credited the National Post as the source of the tip, later coverage offered a more generic summary that such news was being “reported,” which then devolved into vaguer-still citations of “reports,” which then settled into conventional wisdom. Pundits wrote editorials analyzing the political implications of a position the Prime Minister was only rumored to hold, and talking heads guessed his motives in pursuing a policy he had not announced. By Friday morning even Thomas Mulcair was taking the story as a given, declaring at a press conference it was “better late than never” that the Prime Minister had come to embrace a policy long present in the NDP platform.

The story was not true, of course. Premier Wall dismissed the speculation this afternoon with his trademark dad humor, writing on Facebook that the Calgary Stampeders were the only thing he was pressuring the PM to abolish. The Canadian Press swiftly announced that “doubt” was being cast on the story and that the National Post “has backed away” from their earlier confidence. By the time it was obvious that neither Harper nor Wall intended to instigate any joint endorsement of abolishment one way or another, Ivison was tweeting the highly convenient explanation that his source was now claiming “an abolition statement was ready to go but got pulled after the news leaked.” Harper did end up talking about the Senate at his ensuing appearance with Premier Wall, but said nothing new; if the Senate could not be reformed it should be abolished (a stipulation he’s been repeating for years); in the meantime no new senators will be appointed. Internet magic has allowed all the earlier gossip stories to be revised into articles about this.

The Canadian news media has a problem with narratives — the habit of clinging to pre-determined storylines, usually of a center-left flavor, that are too aesthetically pleasing to be compromised with inconvenient facts. This is exacerbated by a related laziness problem, in which any reporting that seems to confirms the narrative (in this case, “desperate prime minister looking for gimmicks to revive sagging brand”) is credulously taken at face value, even when it requires swallowing standards of proof (“some guy says a guy told him”) that would be considered inadmissible in any other context.

John Ivison is a master of satiating the narrative appetites of the moment, which is why he never seems to suffer any professional consequence for spreading the words of chronically wrong sources. The only true consequences, as usual, will be borne by a cynical public who are increasingly justified in believing little of what they read.