{"id":46762,"date":"2013-11-25T08:30:11","date_gmt":"2013-11-25T13:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/?p=46762"},"modified":"2013-11-25T09:55:02","modified_gmt":"2013-11-25T14:55:02","slug":"lorinc-rob-ford-media-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/11\/25\/lorinc-rob-ford-media-truth\/","title":{"rendered":"LORINC: Rob Ford, the media, and the Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"feature-lorinc\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Will Mayor Rob Ford\u2019s bid for re-election become the place where political journalism goes to die?<\/p>\n

This question has been buzzing around in my mind ever since the week from hell, when our crack-smoking, drunk-driving, soft-on-(his own)-crime mayor kept popping up on network television, repeating fabrications as brazen \u2014pun intended \u2014 as any I\u2019ve heard in my career.<\/p>\n

Several Toronto media organizations, which have worked heroically to unearth details of Ford\u2019s shameful conduct, chimed in with dutiful and meticulous fact-checking: No, the $1 billion savings figure is not accurate. No, the City was not going into receivership in 2010. No, the recovery is not specifically attributable to him. No, the most recent tax increases are not the lowest on record, etc.<\/p>\n

And while all this journalistic due diligence is unquestionably necessary, I find myself wondering if it will be sufficient in terms of informing a deeply polarized public about the non-fiction version of the mayor\u2019s legislative record.<\/p>\n

Ford, clearly, doesn\u2019t care. As with Stephen Harper, the mayor\u2019s messaging is always far more important than the content, to the point where the factual underpinnings become incidental and eventually disposable.<\/p>\n

This insidious uncoupling of the political rhetoric and the empirical foundation poses a huge credibility problem that ends up backfiring on the media.<\/p>\n

In my experience, politicians and governments display a wide range of stances towards the “truth.” Most spin and exaggerate their own records, and many commit sins of omission. Certain politicians have such a command of the arguments and the data that they can persuade voters to doubt their own beliefs. Some lie, and a subset of those lie all the time, often about things that they don\u2019t need to lie about.<\/p>\n

Exhibit A: Ford last week claimed he\u2019d been held up by well-wishers in a restaurant for four hours while he was trying to leave with his family. A bald-faced lie. Yes, I can see a longish delay on the way to the door. But four hours? The content of the claim is not important. But the mindset behind it suggests someone utterly indifferent to the relationship between word and deed.*<\/p>\n

If the speaker was goofy old Uncle Rob, who tends to have a few too many when he comes over for dinner, we\u2019d all exchange vaguely embarrassed glances, and then change the topic before he goes off on some other awkward tangent.<\/p>\n

But the speaker is (i) an elected official (still); and (ii) someone with a very large megaphone. How do I know about the four-hour remark? It was on TV.<\/p>\n

Many commentators noted that Ford made numerous unchallenged nose-stretchers during his interviews with Fox, CNN, and even Peter Mansbridge. Those commentators subsequently inventoried the false claims, and now we have those corrections in the public realm to aid us in our understanding. But what if that kind of reporting doesn\u2019t take?<\/p>\n

To illustrate, try this thought experiment: pretend that Ford had said, on CNN, Fox, and the CBC, that Toronto\u2019s economic recovery is due to all those \u201cOrientals\u201d who \u201cwork like dogs.\u201d Or, more darkly, that welfare payments to \u201cPakis\u201d \u2014 a phrase attributed to Ford (in the Lisi court documents) who directed it at a taxi driver on the infamous St. Patrick’s Day party night \u2014 had caused the city\u2019s budget to swell.<\/p>\n

He hasn\u2019t done any of these things, but I raise the question to make a point about what the media will and will not repeat. At a certain point, news organizations must make editorial choices \u2014 obviously not in concert, but nonetheless responding to the same events \u2014 about when they cross the line from critical reporting to the mere amplification of problematic statements.<\/p>\n

Years ago, for example, a Toronto neo-Nazi named Ernst Zundel successfully manipulated a complaint that forced the media into broadcasting his views on the Holocaust during a sensational and deeply regrettable trial in which he had been charged with knowingly disseminating false information. He left court each day with a broad grin, reveling in the attention he would otherwise never have received.<\/p>\n

Ford, of course, is not a hate-monger, but he and his brother certainly do understand how to manipulate the media to broadcast false or outrageous claims.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing some TV news organizations have had internal discussions about endlessly re-airing the mayor\u2019s abusive remarks about his former staffer and wife for precisely these reasons. Why, I wonder, should the ceaseless repetition of patently false campaign-style claims be treated differently?<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a prude: politicians and governments always want to cast their records in the best possible light, and often that means over-interpreting the available data or ignoring inconvenient details. Journalists are paid to challenge and counter political claims, and that\u2019s as it should be, most of the time.<\/p>\n

But Ford is uninterested in tethering his accomplishments to an even vaguely plausible fact base. He\u2019d like voters to accompany him to that parallel, consequence-free universe where rolling apologies make all problems go away, and where black is white and white is black.<\/p>\n

John Barber, writing in The Star<\/em> on the weekend<\/a>, provided a scathing “I-told-you-so” directed mainly at voters who, he argues, knowingly put Ford in office despite much available evidence to suggest he was uniquely unsuited for the job.<\/p>\n

As the city stumbles towards the official 2014 campaign start date, in early January, there is obviously an enormous amount of debate about how to prevent lightning from striking twice.<\/p>\n

Notwithstanding the exceptional investigative reporting of the past year, it seems to me that we in the media must look in the mirror and ask ourselves if or how we\u2019ve been knowing or unwitting accomplices \u2014 enablers \u2014 to the dissemination of countless serial falsehoods that have had an expressly damaging impact on the City\u2019s business and public discourse about local government.<\/p>\n

So should the media choose to stop broadcasting Ford\u2019s dissembling about his record until he begins to observe at least some truth-in-advertising principles?<\/p>\n

As a journalist, I find that solution to be practically and philosophically troubling. The media plays a critical role in ensuring his statements \u2013 from the confessions to the vulgarities to the outright lies \u2013 are part of the public record, and therefore available to citizens and political opponents to cite and critique.<\/p>\n

But Leslie Scrivener, writing in The Star<\/em> yesterday<\/a>, points out that the sort of \u201cshunning\u201d that took place after he made crude on-air remarks about a former staffer could be an effective tool for behaviour modification. \u201cTurning one\u2019s back is a classic way of showing disapproval,\u201d she observes.<\/p>\n

\u201cShould media mikes be turned off for a while?\u201d Scrivener wonders.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a question worth asking. After all, Ford has always flatly refused to operate within the broadly accepted norms of political engagement and discourse.<\/p>\n

If he\u2019s using a different playbook, perhaps we in the media need to as well.<\/p>\n

photo by Sam Javanrouh; illustration by Matthew Blackett<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

* Doug Ford\u2019s dissembling runs to groundless political attacks on his rivals and claims about his own conduct. Soon after he was elected, he bragged that he incurred no office expenses of any sort, a politically unnecessary contention I debunked in The Globe and Mail<\/a> with an access to information request that revealed the lie.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Will Mayor Rob Ford\u2019s bid for re-election become the place where political journalism goes to die? This question has been buzzing around in my mind ever since the week from hell, when our crack-smoking, drunk-driving, soft-on-(his own)-crime mayor kept popping up on network television, repeating fabrications as brazen \u2014pun intended \u2014 as any I\u2019ve heardContinue reading “LORINC: Rob Ford, the media, and the Truth”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4051,"featured_media":46764,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nLORINC: Rob Ford, the media, and the Truth - Spacing Toronto<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/toronto\/2013\/11\/25\/lorinc-rob-ford-media-truth\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LORINC: Rob Ford, the media, and the Truth - Spacing Toronto\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Will Mayor Rob Ford\u2019s bid for re-election become the place where political journalism goes to die? 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