How should the media cover a hostile Ford?
While Doug Ford loathes most journalists, Ford also craves media attention, writes Bob Hepburn.
For much of the past eight years Doug Ford has had a strong hate-on for many of Ontario’s media outlets, and especially the Toronto Star.
His hostility arose initially from what he claims was unfair and unjustified media coverage of his brother, the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford, whose welldocumented problems with drugs and booze were reported extensively in the Star and other media.
During his one term as a Toronto councillor and during his failed 2014 Toronto mayoral bid, Ford continually attacked much of the “mainstream media,” suggesting many reporters were either liars, “downtown elitists” or hacks with a liberal bias.
Bashing the media isn’t new for politicians. It has been happening for decades, maybe centuries. Rob Ford did it as mayor, going so far as decreeing that the Star’s reporters weren’t to be given any official city documents and at one point filing a notice of libel against the Star over its coverage.
And in the U.S., Donald Trump has taken the tactic to new heights — or lows — with his rants about “fake news” and his personal attacks on individual journalists.
Such tactics are extremely effective for Trump and now for Doug Ford because they appeal to their base of supporters, who share a hatred for the mainstream media, seeing it as the enemy.
While he loathes most journalists, Ford also craves media attention. He likes to manipulate the press, staging news conferences that have no news, granting interviews to favoured conservative columnists at the tabloid Toronto Sun and talk-show hosts who often act as unquestioning cheerleaders for his candidacy.
So how should the media cover Doug Ford now that he’s the Ontario Progressive Conservative leader and possibly the next premier?
Indeed, how should reporters cover any politician who is so obviously hostile to them?
Just this week, Ford flashed that dislike for journalists during a testy and often condescending interview with Robyn Bresnahan, host of CBC’s Ottawa Morning program.
Should reporters delve once again into Ford’s personal and business histories? Should they follow up, for example, on a story published several years ago by the Globe and Mail questioning Ford’s claim that he’s a sound businessman? Should they pursue another Globe report that said Ford was a hashish dealer in the 1980s, which he denies?
As much as it stirs the wrath of Ford and his Ford Nation fans, the fundamental role of the media is to provide responsible reporting on politicians in order to inform citizens on who they are and where they stand on issues. It’s especially true in Ford’s case, where if polls are correct, the Tories will win the June 7 election and he will become the second most powerful politician in Canada.
The media is right to question out- landish claims by Ford, such as the one he repeated in the CBC Ottawa interview about how he saved Toronto taxpayers billions of dollars as a councillor.
As I have written before, it’s the job of journalists to provide context and analysis of what politicians are telling voters.
They have a duty to report on their backgrounds, to get better at factchecking in real time on social media, to push them to elaborate on overly general policy statements, and to compare and contrast their election platforms.
In an interview last weekend on CBC’s The Sunday Edition, Washington Post editor Marty Barron said there’s a growing demand in the U.S. in the wake of Trump’s election for fair and honest accountability journalism that holds government officials and powerful individuals to account.
“When you see wrongdoing or falsehoods on the part of powerful individuals, including the people who are leading the country — and maybe especially the people who are leading the country — we have an obligation to investigate that as energetically and aggressively as we possibly can,” Barron said.
The same can be said about Ontario — and Ford.
It may not seem fair to Ford, but it’s the media’s job fearlessly to dig up any and all information about him that readers should know about and that is true. To do anything less would be an abdication of the media’s role in our democracy.