Perceptions by Gerry Warner

You know who the real victim is in the Rob Ford gong show now galvanizing the country – Canadian journalism!

Perhaps I should say world journalism because the Toronto mayor’s trials and tribulations seem to be titillating the whole globe thanks to so-called “citizen journalism,” the Internet and social media gossip sites like Gawker.

Many years ago when I began scribbling Teeline (short hand) in a beat up note book in an Interior town I won’t name I got fired after my third week on the job for doing exactly what I was supposed to do, getting as many “on the record” sources for a sensitive story I was attempting to do. It was a given in those days that you didn’t print anything unless you had an attributed source for your information – and if it was at all sensitive – you better have at least another source to corroborate the information from your original source (better to have two or three).

Now living in the Digital Era of journalism, I feel like a curmudgeon for shaking my head at the lack of attribution that passes for “journalism” these days not to mention the rampant use of single sources or anonymous sources to building stories on nothing more than outright speculation. But the Ford brothers’ fiasco, of course, tops everything where we see a world-wide story based on buying information from an unnamed drug dealer who has yet to surface and may not even exist!

But this hasn’t stopped the breathless coverage of the Toronto Star, The Globe and Mail, CBC and several big American and British news outlets from spinning the yarn in their own pages though CBC deserves a modicum of credit for inserting the proviso that it has been unable to verify the existence of the mythical video before it too jumps into a cesspool of journalistic hearsay.

Don’t get me wrong. The Ford brothers have invited this kind of slipshod coverage with their outlandish behavior on Toronto City Council and I’m not defending their obtuse approach to public service for a second. But they are elected officials. They have not been charged with anything to date and they are as deserving of fair and professional media coverage as anybody else and they certainly aren’t getting it.

Consider the alleged video. A Gawker “journalist” claims to have seen it and says it was made on a cell phone by a drug-dealer who wants $200,000 for it. The two hundred grand has now been supposedly raised by “crowd-sourcing,” whatever that is, but surprise, surprise, the drug dealing source has now disappeared. Pardon me while I take a shower, but is this “journalism?” And even if the alleged video ever does turn up and somehow it’s verified that cocaine is being smoked on the screen and it’s verified that the person doing the smoking is Toronto Mayor Rob Ford and – this is crucial – it’s verified that the video hasn’t been altered or tampered with in any way, what about the ethics of this method of journalism?

Then there was the Globe’s 18-month investigation of Councillor Doug Ford’s alleged indiscretions as a youthful drug dealer some 30 years ago. Once again not a single named source and no allegation whatsoever that Councillor Ford had ever been charged, little alone convicted, of drug dealing. Not much meat for an 18-month “investigation,” but it does look perilously close to a smear story.

What we’re seeing here, of course, is a good ol’ journalistic – if I can use the word here – “pile-on” story. One medium starts it and everyone piles on and does it too. Happens all the time, but it’s kind of sad to see a paper with the stature of the Globe joining the frenzy.

What we’re seeing here is what passes for “journalism” in the Age of the Internet and social media. That too is very sad. And it’s only going to get worse.

– Gerry Warner is a retired journalist and Cranbrook City Councillor. His opinions are his own.

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