Alright... enough is enough. I am making a plea from all Canadians to the Toronto (and other) news outlets: stop putting the microphone near Rob Ford. I don't know about you but I've had enough and I am not sure how the daily "foot in the mouth" comments from Mr. Ford are telling me anymore than I already know about this man's personal problems.
I think, by now, we are all aware that Rob Ford should not be running Canada' largest city. Some of us are mortified to see all the Rob Ford headlines on CNN, the BBC news and on other international news sites particularly as more "stories" seem to break almost hourly. But at what point does the media become culpable in the spectacle of this story?
This is a very interesting question. The issue of journalistic ethics came up recently in a class I am teaching. It has made me think carefully about the new world in which we live in terms of what makes news and how the news is broken to us in the 24 hour news cycle. The fact is that "the news" has changed. Great journalists have lamented the decline of journalist ethics and there are fears about the decline of the role of professional journalists in this age of citizen journalism. The Rob Ford story straddles an awkward line between a real story of investigative journalism and a salacious story that is ready fodder for the tabloid "news"papers that grace, or should I say, stain the grocery check-out newsstand.
Journalists run this fine line everyday as they sit and wait for the next pronouncement of Toronto's mayor. In fact, in September of this year, Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke defended the newspaper's choice to run the front-page story that broke the allegations that Rob Ford had appeared in a video smoking crack cocaine. The Star was asked to defend its decision before the Ontario Press Council. You can read a full account of what Cooke said in the article that appears in the Star archive (it is available on the net under the title: "Ford crack video: Star defends its "transparency and accountability" in reporting story") but I want to draw your attention to the first question the paper was asked to comment on: "Did the Star article deal with a matter that is in the public interest?"
For all investigative journalism, the key question has to be: "is it in our interest to know these facts?" Cooke defended the paper by saying that, "In our respectful opinion, connections between drug dealers, gun dealers, a notorious crack house, and the chief magistrate of Canada's largest city fit the definition of something that can and should be explored in the public interest." Let's put this in perspective. Just today (which happens to be Thursday), I was privileged to meet some terrific students from a local high school and we were talking about government and politics. We were looking at how population determines the number of seats a province has in the House of Commons. We put some numbers on a map and, low and behold, we observed that the entire province of Prince Edward Island has a total population of 146,100; Toronto has a population of over 5 million. In other words, Rob Ford is running 34 provinces... Ok, I exaggerate but my point is that his constituency is a critical and central part of the Canadian economy. Toronto is a world city and it constitutes an important international hub for business and tourism. In other words, it is in the public interest to be made aware of the Rob Ford story.
But... and here's where we have to have to decide which side of the journalistic line we want our reporters on.... Now that we know that the video exists and now that Rob Ford has told us that he did, in fact, smoke crack cocaine let us please stop putting the microphone under his nose so that he can no longer humiliate himself. The truth is we have all seen enough. Love or hate Rob Ford I think we should show some humanity and turn off the spectacle. What we are hearing now is no longer in the public interest.
