Ex-Moose Jaw reporter unleashes controversy
A former Moose Jaw Times-Herald reporter found herself making news Thursday after she released a controversial video of MP Tom Lukiwski she took the night of the federal election.
Mickey Djuric recorded Lukiwski’s victory speech at his party headquarters on Oct. 19. Recording with one hand and tweeting with the other, she thought she heard him call an NDP candidate a “whore,” but decided, “He would not say that publicly.”
After election night, Djuric went on holidays for two weeks. When she returned to work, she replayed the video. That’s when she heard what she believes were the words “NDP whore.”
Craig Slater, managing editor for the Times-Herald, found the timing of when Djuric made the video known to him “a bit peculiar.” But the newspaper advised the reporter to pursue the story, he said.
Djuric called Lukiwski and Karen Purdy, the NDP candidate in Moose Jaw Wakamow, on Monday. Djuric said Lukiwski denied he used the word “whore,” but told Djuric that if he’d misspoken, he was sorry.
“(Lukiwski) said, ‘If anyone has followed my political career, they know I don’t speak that way,’” she said.
Djuric said in a second call, Lukiwski told her he’d talked to his campaign manager and some people at party headquarters on election night and they heard him say “horde.”
On Tuesday, Times-Herald management reversed course and decided it would not pursue the story, Djuric said.
Slater said the interview with Lukiwski “raised an element of doubt in our minds,” and the editorial team questioned if they were hearing his words correctly.
“We didn’t want to turn it into a he-said versus we-allege,” Slater said.
Plus, he said, no one who attended the Oct. 19 event had raised concerns about Lukiwski’s words.
“We just wanted to be responsible with it; we wanted to be fair with it,” Slater said.
Djuric resigned from the Times-Herald on Thursday because she believes the public “should be the jury on this matter.”