More On One Of Our Scandals-du-Jour

The media vs. Rob Ford: Barbara Amiel explains why the war is over the top

"A quick reprise. There is said to be a tape showing Mayor Ford smoking crack cocaine. Who cares, would be my response, but that’s idiosyncratic. Still, the actual tape has never appeared. Posses of journalists are asking the mayor if he is a crack cocaine addict. Every crack cocaine addict I have ever seen is a bundle of skin and bone. Mayor Ford could be their poster boy: Smoke crack and not lose an ounce."

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"In summary. The elder brother of Rob Ford is alleged to have sold hash, a soft drug that both the Globe and the Star have suggested should not be criminalized—except perhaps when it involves the Ford family. There is zero evidence for these allegations. So what is the crime—dealing in soft drugs or being a member of the Ford family? This story has been 18 months in the making. The reporters worked hard but came up with nothing. Not their fault; it happens. You don’t publish. Was all that consulting and agonizing described by the Globe in a note with the story simply its editors wrestling with the morality of making accusations with no evidence? Do they think the absence of evidence is evidence? This is about as bad as journalism gets.

By the 1980s, psychiatrists at Ontario’s Addiction Research Foundation had backed the idea that people should inform themselves about the consequences of drug use and make their own decisions. Even earlier, we had the LeDain royal commission on drugs recommending decriminalization. If every word about Doug Ford and family were true, what we have is a 26-year-old story of a couple of kids who were selling soft drugs at a time when controversy over usage was declining."

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"One can only imagine the hysteria and accusations if this were done to a protected icon of the progressives: if newspapers or TV aired “alleged” nasties about the family of David Suzuki or Stephen Lewis. They would rightly be told where to get off. Right now and here."

Yup. I've already said (on SNN's webpage comments, I think) that when all is said and done, it will be journalism that is lying dead on the floor. Suicide, apparently.