More than a month after Councillor Howard Moscoe went to City Council with a motion accusing the
Councillor Moscoe, backed by City of
This issue came to light on March 12 and today is May 1. Fifty days elapsed before the Sun decided it had anything to say on the matter. If the case is so cut and dry from the Sun’s perspective, why did it take them more than a month and a half to cobble together a response? As any public relations practitioner knows (that’s my professional background), you don’t stay silent when someone attacks your brand. Forget the lawyers’ advice; your brand is your business. In this case, the Sun’s brand is standing up for the average taxpayer (whether you think they do it well is another question) and Councillor Moscoe’s motion challenges that in no uncertain terms.
The Sun’s first public statement on this came in the form of a column by one of its writers. Trying to present the Sun’s position through a journalist on staff reeks of desperation. Who really believes that Levy could be even marginally objective? Not that I would expect her to withhold her opinion — for better or worse, Levy’s bread and butter is opinion — but if Levy said the Sun was spinning lies or half truths, does anyone believe the people writing Levy’s pay cheques would have let that story go to print?
The next mistake was making a lawyer the company spokesperson. If I’m worried about protecting my butt, I get my lawyer to speak for me. Having a lawyer front and centre is the universal sign for “I’ve got something to hide.â€
The second and third communication errors could have been avoided if the Sun’s publisher had written the message in the paper. Words from the publisher mean that no one appears to be hiding and a journalist’s integrity doesn’t have to be questioned. And most importantly, whatever the publisher has to say is the word from the top and if they’re convincing words readers will accept them.
Finally, Levy used more bluster than Tim Hudak during question period in her attempt to discredit Sun detractors. Granted she usually obfuscates serious policy matters with silly insults but if Levy’s putting forward the corporate position on this, a reasonable person could be excused for wondering if she was just trying to throw readers off the Sun’s trail with this tactic.
But in all of this, the Sun hasn’t addressed two key questions that I’m sure the entire world wants the answers to: Will the Sun reject the subsidy the City is offering and pay market value for their city hall office? And will the Sun pay the market rate for their now free parking spot in the city hall garage? Regardless of one’s opinion on these questions for all media outlets, the Sun has spent more column inches than all the other local papers combined to skewer those who take advantage of these types of perks. It only seems appropriate that the answer to both questions is Yes. Any other answer would be shamefully hypocritical.
Photograph by Salty Sea Dog.
7 comments
the gloves are off….
Reminds me of the old saying (just found out it’s a George Bernard Shaw quote) “never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.”
The amounts here are minor for the players involved. $50K is 0.005% of Sun Media’s annual revenue and 0.0006% of the city’s annual operating budget. It might look like a golden opportunity to highlight the hypocrisy of the Toronto Sun, but otherwise collecting rent from the Sun seems to me to be one of the least important things happening at City Hall right now.
No bacon from that pig, but very good to see the pig’s hypocrisy. I kind of feel bad for sun writers and editors — are they forced to be dumb? Or are they…dumb, and print their crap w/out worry?
I’ve known a handful of journalists there and they are good people with fully developed brains. A good friend of mine has nothing but nice things to say about Rob Granestein, the editorial page editor. He’s a fair guy that doesn’t seem to be dogmatic.
Where the brain-dumb ideas come from is their bosses. Execs and Marketing people who do not have any knowledge of journalistic integrity who are making decisions about the direction of the paper. more than any other publication in the city, The Sun’s division between the newsroom and ad/marketing/exec is very blurred. Only the Sports section seems to be the batiston of press freedom.
I hope the Sun folds into a free daily paper, or a free daily Sports paper. We have the Post and Globe covering the right side of things in this city.
So there are good people at the Sun. How do they deal with routinely compromising their standards?
If the paper doesn’t have standards there is nothing to compromise. As for the writers, who knows if they feel like they are compromising. If their boss tells them to do something you usually have to do it. We’ve all had to do things at work that we’re not always comfortable with. And the journalists are getting orders from their editors who are the ones getting orders from execs, etc.
Journalists should have personal standards.
And if they are editorializing then they should have non-ephemeral and more or less static convictions. Too often I see the “Hey, this is a big story! Let’s point fingers and opine.” only to print a story or act in a way that contradicts what they imply or aver they stand for in previous pieces.
Sue-Ann Levy’s piece of textual diarrhea is an example of this. She derides Moscoe (who I am NO fan of) by saying “he felt it his duty to bring the matter to public attention.” Excuse me but isn’t this your and your paper’s bread-and-butter Sue-Ann? Is it the sole domain of trashy tabloids to “break” storys? And, IT IS HIS DUTY to make the public aware, isn’t it?
Anyhow, then Sue-Ann does just as Adam states, muddles the issue with her petty name-calling and finger-pointing. It is like listening to a 3rd grader in trouble, explaining nothing while implicating everyone else in irrelevant matters.
As for a lease, there is nothing in the law that states they must have a lease in writing. There would have been an implied lease falling under the Commercial Tenancies Act so how is the lease issue relevant to being in arrears?
They were delinquent it seems and they are trying to rationalize and deflect, immediately accusing City Hall of incompetence. The city should sue for defamation but I think being that the Council is a public body they can’t.