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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 intoallegations 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 theOntario newspapers.
Thank you for your anticipated reply.
Darylle Donley
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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 Fordcoaches.
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 reasonableopportunity 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 owneyes and hear it with their own ears.
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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 andKhattak 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 publicattention, 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."
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In our respectful opinion, connections between drug dealers, gun dealers, a notorious
crack house, and the chief magistrate of Canadas 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 informationon 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
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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 mayors 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 fromthe 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.
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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 Fords home and his brothers 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 Mayors home told the Star to leave. The Star, however, was
able to get comment from Mayor Fords 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 Mayors 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 thetape we would not tell the mayor we had seen it. And so we didnt. The source
feared that telling the mayor we had seen it would compromise him. At the Star we
dont 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.
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That is when we went to the Mayor and his staff to obtain comment. We did obtain
comment from the Mayors lawyer and a no comment from the Mayors 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 Stars 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 thatstory or any others.
Thank you for considering our submission.
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