Tag Archives: the toronto star

Rob Ford’s behavior does matter, and it diminishes us all

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When Rob Ford was accused of being drunk and belligerent at a Leafs game and asking a stranger if he wanted his wife to “get raped and shot,” he lied and said he wasn’t even at the game. When he was asked by the Toronto Sun if U.S. police had charged him with possession of marijuana, he lied by forcefully and repeatedly denying it. When the CBC’s This Hour Has 22 Minutes made an admittedly-offside attempt to interview him in his driveway, he lied multiple times, saying it was dark out, his daughter was with him, and that the team from the CBC ran at him yelling “we’ve got you Rob Ford, we got you,” none of which is true according to video evidence.

We have not yet seen video evidence of Ford’s encounter with Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale (some security footage is apparently being reviewed UPDATE: Doug Ford says the video will not be released), so for now we’re left only with their two very different versions of events. Ford’s long history of dishonesty, combined with the fact that Dale is an award-winning journalist whose very profession is to document and tell the truth, has lead many to conclude with a reasonable amount of confidence that Dale’s version of events—in which the reporter never left public property nor came close to entering the mayor’s backyard when Ford ran at him, shouting with his fist cocked, and forced him to drop his phone and voice recorder—is the more accurate one. (Add to this that Ford appears to corroborate significant pieces of Dale’s account, but does not provide an explanation for why Dale would yell for help and drop his phone if he didn’t fear for his safety.)

The mayor then waited two hours before contacting a friendly media outlet (I use this phrase confidently, since Newstalk 1010 provides him with a weekly show) to claim that he had caught a Toronto Star reporter trespassing on his property and taking photos of his family. (There is no evidence that’s true, and Ford now admits he never saw Dale come closer than “maybe five meters” from his fence.) That delay, meaning that television cameras didn’t arrive until after dark (no doubt everyone watching the evening news pictured Dale lurking in the backyard after sundown, when in fact he was on public land while it was still light out) is seen by some as a deliberate attempt to distort the truth in a way that undermines the credibility of the Star.

Once Dale’s version of events was published to the Star’s website, even those who believed Dale started to criticize and mock him. Suggesting he had no right to be doing his job (reporting on a story that Ford wants to buy a piece of public land he alternatively says is required either to enhance his home’s security or build a larger play area for his children) on public property in daylight is only upstaged in offensiveness by the pack of people, most of them men and many of them journalists, questioning Dale’s manliness for being frightened when physically threatened and robbed by an agitated man twice his size.

Now, on World Press Freedom day, the mayor is threatening a complete media boycott unless Daniel Dale is fired from his job of reporting on city hall.

There is a temptation to lament that this is what we’re talking about instead of “real issues,” including the “real” story that the mayor is trying to buy a piece of a public park to increase the size of his property. But there’s often more than one issue simultaneously worthy of our attention, and the issue of the mayor’s character is significant and increasingly problematic. How can anyone achieve “journalistic balance” and report on the mayor when a history of blatant and intentional deceit is compounded with threats of physical violence (I am not prepared to define a cocked fist as anything else) towards a reporter?

Years ago, when asked why he didn’t tell the truth about being at the Leafs game, Ford said it was because he was “embarrassed.” He should be deeply embarrassed by last night’s events and his reaction to them as well, but it goes beyond that. We elect leaders to represent the best of us. When Rob Ford charged Daniel Dale, he did so as our mayor. We’re all diminished when this is the kind of leadership we have to look to, and we deserve better.

All the news that’s fit to crib

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Photo by Mark J Hunter
Photo by Mark J Hunter

One of the most important functions of newspapers, we are told, is that they produce professional content that no one else can. Investigating and breaking news stories is the most commonly referenced example. “If newspapers didn’t exist,” the argument goes, “bloggers wouldn’t have anything to write about.”

There is some truth to that statement: the vast majority of chatter in the blogosphere is reaction and commentary rather than original reporting. Even opinions and analysis are usually rehashed from professionals. Last month at the 2009 Interactive Exchange (IN09) Richard Stursberg, Executive Vice-President of English Services for CBC, repeatedly insisted that blogs and web 2.0 websites do not create content, they only distribute content. “If old media dies,” Stursberg told conference attendees, weeks before announcing massive layoffs at his corporation, “I don’t know who’s going to make content.” (Paraphrased from memory.)

On the one hand, I agree that a professional news media is and has been a critical component of democracy. The fact that this model is breaking, and will probably break completely before a replacement is found, is of concern. But what also concerns me is the fact that old media appears to be going out of its way to hide and deny the positive contribution that new media is making. One specific event this past week helped to convince me of that. (More on that below.)

Listening to newspaper veterans speak you’d believe they have a monopoly on overturning rocks and introducing new information. That’s nothing more than a wishful delusion. The fact is that by its own criteria, the news media has been doing a bad job, and others have started to pick up the slack. One Canadian political example that comes to mind is the blog Buckets of Grewal, which played an important role in uncovering some key facts regarding the Grewal tapes scandal. (I’ve had a few much more humble achievements myself. For example, I’ve not seen anyone else report on the connections between a supposedly independent study about the Hummer and the Hummer’s manufacturer, nor do I know of any columnist who noticed some disturbing parallels in two news events separated by a few years.)

Instead of being honest about examples of bloggers contributing to the news industry, old media, and newspapers in particular, would rather bury those examples in favour of promoting the popular image of bloggers as parasites to media companies.

When I was on staff at Torontoist, a popular Toronto news, events, and culture blog, we accepted with a sense of inevitability that whenever we were lucky enough (or, dare I say, good enough) to get an exclusive story of any significance it would usually appear in Toronto’s newspapers the next day without credit. Proving that we were the source of many of these stories was almost impossible of course, but there was a definite pattern, and I’m told journalists at the Toronto Star sometimes confided privately that we were indeed being cribbed. And then there were some situations, including this January 2008 incident involving the Toronto Sun, where full sections of our writing happened to appear word-for-word in print without attribution. (In that case, the Sun ended up apologizing, kinda.)

This past week, my old Torontoist colleague Jonathan Goldsbie authored an excellent example of the kind light that bloggers can shine through the cracks that news stories pass through as they fall. Responding to a reader letter, Goldsbie decided to get to the bottom of a Virgin Radio bus ad that some found offensive. (And by “some,” I mean anyone who thinks it’s not particularly funny for advertisements shown in the transit system to make jokes about subway suicide.) Goldsbie did a lot of original research, connected dots that others had missed, and ultimately was the catalyst for having the ads pulled.

It’s a big story, and it was covered prominently in Toronto’s newspapers the next day. But while the Globe and Mail at least gave some small credit to Torontoist for bringing the ad to the TTC’s attention, the Toronto Star’s article was aloof and vague on the question of who actually broke and developed this story. And neither paper, in my opinion, gave Goldsbie and Torontoist the credit they deserved.

There’s a reason newspapers are behaving this way. Their industry is in free fall and they don’t know what to do about it or where the bottom is. No one does. So they’re afraid, and fear triggers “behaviors of escape and avoidance.” (Wikipedia)

That’s a reason, but not an excuse. The smart thing to do would be to embrace what may be early glimmers of the future of journalism. Unfortunately, there are indications that at least some papers are more comfortable clinging to the declining models of the past.

ps. Right before I hit publish on this post, John Dickerson of Slate magazine tweeted about another great example.

Mark J. Hunter photo from Flickr.