Toronto Star Statement to Ontario Press Council

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Scot Hodge
6 years ago
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1 Toronto Star Statement to Ontario Press Council Ladies and gentlemen of the Ontario Press Council, members of the public, and fellow journalists: The Toronto Star is pleased to be given the opportunity to talk about the front page story of Friday, May 17. The story described the attempts by people involved in the drug trade to sell a video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford smoking what appears to be crack cocaine. It detailed how two Toronto Star reporters, Kevin Donovan and Robyn Doolittle, were shown this video by a drug dealer and his associate, one of whom was involved in making the video. In the video, the mayor was heard to make disparaging comments about minorities and homosexuals. The May 17 story springboarded off a year long investigation by Star reporters into allegations that Mayor Ford had a substance abuse problem for which his own staff was urging him unsuccessfully to seek treatment. The council has decided to hear a complaint from Ms Darylle Donley. Here is the complaint: I would be curious to know just how far a TV or radio reporter or newspaper person, has to go before they are sanctioned and curtailed? The Ford brothers are being lied about, innuendos and allegations are being made against them. The news should be concrete and proven truth. Two Somali drug dealers? If these are two real people would they possibly be capable of creative videography? Or does your office believe that no one would do such a thing? It appears that the days of obtaining reliable news from one's daily newspaper is long gone. I might as well purchase NOW, Tattler or People, or some similar gossip paper to obtain my information. I could always watch TMZ, too; yet more stretched information. I am curious to know what your criteria is regarding mistruths and allegations in the Ontario newspapers. Thank you for your anticipated reply. Darylle Donley

2 The press council said in a letter to us that we at the Star are not to concern ourselves this morning with whether the story is true or not. But I must tell you now - and with great emphasis - that the story is true. Every word of it. I ask for your indulgence here because I would like to read the first two paragraphs of the story in question. A cellphone video that appears to show Mayor Rob Ford smoking crack cocaine is being shopped around Toronto by a group of Somali men involved in the drug trade. Two Toronto Star reporters have viewed the video three times. It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches. The press council has asked the Star to provide an opening statement that addresses the three following points: 1. Did the Star article deal with a matter that is in the public interest? 2. Were adequate efforts made to verify the allegations? 3. Was Mr. Ford given adequate notice of the allegations and a reasonable opportunity to respond, and did the newspaper include that response in its reporting? First, the public interest question. Two experienced Star reporters, one of them the leading investigative reporter in our country, watch a video of the mayor of Canada's largest city smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and making disparaging comments about minorities and homosexuals. And they watch that video THREE times. They see it with their own eyes and hear it with their own ears.

3 The video was clear and distinct, not blurry or shaky, and the mayor's voice was slurred but his face was clear. In our package we have provided you with a copy of the story, other reference material, and a full-frame photograph the Star ran alongside the May 17 story. This photo was taken outside of what the people of Toronto now understand to be a notorious crackhouse. This bungalow was later a target of one of the search warrants in the Project Traveller raids that saw the arrests of numerous people and the seizure of drugs and guns. Pictured with Mayor Ford in the photo are three men who were all alleged members of the Dixon City Crew, a gang running drugs and guns gang in north Etobicoke. The men are: Anthony Smith (who was murdered in a shooting earlier this year), Muhammad Khattak (injured in the same shooting), and Monir Kassim. Kassim was arrested and charged with drug and gun offences in the Project Traveller raids and Khattak with drug offences. The issue of guns and drugs falls within the public interest. Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, at the Project Traveller press conference, spoke of the disastrous effects guns, drugs and gangs have on our community. Blair said these activities have a devastating impact on communities and on families and on those who are victims of violence and crime in our communities. That the Mayor of Toronto has any connection with people connected to these guns and drugs gangs is something that is very much in the public interest and that is why the Star explored this issue and continues to explore the issue. Mr. Chairman, the Supreme Court of Canada has some views on what is in the public interest. Here are two key paragraphs on what the judges said in a 2009 decision ruling on what is responsible journalism: "To be of public interest, the subject matter must be shown to be one inviting public attention, or about which the public has some substantial concern because it affects the welfare of citizens, or one to which considerable public notoriety or controversy has attached."

4 In our respectful opinion, connections between drug dealers, gun dealers, a notorious crack house, and the chief magistrate of Canada s largest city fit the definition of something that can and should be explored in the public interest. The story the Star produced, and other related stories, were investigative journalism, something the Star has committed a great deal of time and resources to. The leading English case on public interest and responsible journalism states that there is a compelling public interest in investigative journalism. The court, in Reynolds, wrote: There is no need to elaborate on the importance of the role discharged by the media in the expression and communication of information and comment on political matters. It is through the mass media that most people today obtain their information on political matters. Without freedom of expression by the media, freedom of expression would be a hollow concept. The interest of a democratic society in ensuring a free press weighs heavily in the balance in deciding whether any curtailment of this freedom bears a reasonable relationship to the purpose of the curtailment. In this regard it shold be kept in mind that one of the contemporary functions of the media is investigative journalism. This activity, as much as the traditional activities of reporting and commenting is part of the vital role of the press and the media generally. At the Star, we want to be a good and useful citizen and we do our best to practice responsible journalism in the public interest. There was no doubt in our minds back on the evening of Thursday, May 16 and there is no doubt now that the story of the video of the mayor of our city smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and the photograph showing the mayor of our city outside a notorious crackhouse was an example of responsible and useful journalism and was in the public interest then and is in the public interest now. It meets all known ethical and legal measures. It is a story that is still playing out. In the months since the May 17 story, the Star has reported on a police investigation into activities of people around the mayor and their attempts to obtain the crack video in question. The people of Toronto have yet to hear evidence in the Project Traveller court cases and related police activities. The Chief of Police, Bill Blair, refused an opportunity to clear the mayor at a press

5 conference called to explain the Project Traveller raids. There is clearly more to come on this story and the Star and other media continue to report on these matters. The second point the press council has asked The Star to address is the question of our efforts to verify the allegations. The thrust of the May 17 story was that people involved in the drug trade were trying to sell a video of Mayor Ford that appeared to show him smoking crack cocaine. In addition to attempts to sell the video to the Star, these men had contacted Gawker and CNN. That is fact. As to the contents of the video, two respected, veteran journalists viewed and heard the video. They were allowed to pause the video. They questioned the men who showed the video to the reporters and learned details about the circumstances in which the video was shot. Our story on May 17 was transparent. We told the reader what we knew and what we did not know. We saw the video a month before, after reporters Donovan and Doolittle published a story detailing how the mayor was impaired at a charity ball. That caused the men who had control of the video to contact the Star. During that month, the reporters had frequent contact with people connected to the video and with others who had knowledge of some of the mayor s activities. Mr. Chairman, the Star has a long and noble history of fine and unblemished investigative reporting and this entire Mayor Ford series of stories was put together over many months with the utmost care for accuracy, ethics and legalities. Thirdly, the press council has asked if the Star gave Mayor Ford adequate notice of the story and a reasonable opportunity to respond, and did we include that response in our reporting? So that the press council can understand how Mayor Ford deals with questions from the Star and other media we have attached a synopsis of our earlier attempts to get comment from the Mayor on previous allegations of public impairment and substance abuse. As the record shows, Mayor Ford does not respond to interview requests from the Star.

6 The Star has also attached a synopsis of our attempts to get comment from the Mayor and his staff the night before the crack video story was published. As the synopsis shows, the Star made numerous attempts to contact the Mayor, his chief of staff, his brother (a councillor), and other people connected to the mayor. Reporters visited Mayor Ford s home and his brother s home. Reporters called the Mayor and other officials in his office. We sent text messages. Our synopsis shows we made at least 14 attempts to get comment. A security guard at the Mayor s home told the Star to leave. The Star, however, was able to get comment from Mayor Ford s lawyer, Dennis Morris. Mr. Morris told the Star that the allegations were false and defamatory. Mr. Morris also questioned how by viewing a video the viewer could determine what the person is actually doing or smoking. The Star also reached Mark Towhey, the Mayor s chief of staff, and explained the story to him and sought comment. Mr. Towhey hung up on the Star. The Star included these responses in the story. You may wonder why we did not go to Mayor Ford with questions about the video earlier than that night. The fact is, we couldn't. During the month that we were attempting to get possession of the crack video we had promised our source we would keep our knowledge of the video confidential until we were given the green light to report on it. The man was scared, physically scared, of what would happen to both him and the drug dealer who had possession of the video. A quick word here about confidential sources. The media is often criticized, and certainly has been in this case, for using such sources. The Supreme Court of Canada made it very clear in the Grant v. The Toronto Star case that use of confidential sources can be an important element of responsible journalism. We promised this source that we would not identify him. We promised him that if he showed us the tape we would not tell the mayor we had seen it. And so we didn t. The source feared that telling the mayor we had seen it would compromise him. At the Star we don t break promises made to sources. But on the day the existence of the tape was revealed by Gawker we immediately went to our source and he released us from our promise.

7 That is when we went to the Mayor and his staff to obtain comment. We did obtain comment from the Mayor s lawyer and a no comment from the Mayor s chief of staff. To this day, the people of Toronto have yet to receive an explanation from Mayor Ford for the video. His one comment was: As for a video, I can't comment on a video I have never seen or does not exist. One of the Star s subsequent stories detailed how the Mayor and members of his staff discussed, on May 17, a potential location for the video. A video the mayor said did not exist. The police are investigating this matter. One of our most important values at the Star is our transparency and accountability. We are pleased to answer in more detail any questions about our reporting on that story or any others. Thank you for considering our submission.

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