The News of the World phone-hacking affair is turning out to be the queen mother of all journalistic scandals. While Canadian newsies have rarely sunk so low as Rupert Murdoch’s crew across the pond, we’ve been known to cause a controversy or two. Here are some of the homegrown doozies.
1. The Prostitute Professor
After learning that Ryerson journalism professor Gerald Hannon had written some questionable things about sex between grown men and boys (he wasn’t all that opposed to it) Toronto Sun columnist Heather Bird wrote a series of ill-informed articles in 1995 alleging that he was teaching pedophilia in the classroom. His students denied this, but after badgering Hannon for weeks with a series of sensational articles (and nearly running him over with her car), Bird and another Sun reporter got him to admit that he was working as a prostitute. Ryerson eventually cleared him on allegations he had taught pedophilia to students, and gave him a slap on the wrist for talking about his sex work. He now freelances for publications like Toronto Life, and over the course of his career has won thirteen National Magazine Awards.
2. Wong target
In 2006 Globe and Mail columnist Jan Wong wrote a front-page story about the Dawson College shooting that connected that crime and two previous Montreal shootings to Quebec’s language laws, insinuating that the province’s obsession with “pure laine” drove immigrants to murder. Outrage from Quebec was immediate and immense, and Premier Jean Charest and Prime Minister Harper both demanded Wong apologize. The Globe had been using the outspoken Wong as an effective weapon in the heated newspaper wars with the newly-minted National Post, but she was a divisive personality at the paper and her editors, despite having approved the piece, deflected responsibility for it onto her and subordinate editors. She left the paper acrimoniously and now writes for Chatelaine and Toronto Life.
3. Ceeb-y jeebies
In 2008, television reporter Krista Erickson was pulled from CBC’s Ottawa bureau after an internal investigation revealed she had fed questions to a Liberal MP for use at corruption hearings against Brian Mulroney. Erickson was shifted to CBC’s Toronto bureau but left the network this year to join the Sun News Network, where she recently garnered attention with an aggressive anti-arts diatribe thinly disguised as an interview with renowned dancer Margie Gillis. The Canadian Council of Broadcasting Standards was so overloaded by objections to Erickson’s interview that they asked viewers to stop filing complaints about it.
4. Dion demolition
Days before the 2008 federal election, CTV reporter Steve Murphy began an interview with Liberal leader Stéphane Dion by asking him, “If you were prime minister now, what would you have done that Mr. Harper has not done?” Dion, confused as to whether Murphy wanted him to speculate on what he would do if he was elected in 2008 or what he would have done if he had been elected two years before, asked three times to start the interview over again. Murphy agreed not to air the three false starts, but CTV later decided to air them anyway. The interview made Dion look woefully unprepared, and many believe it contributed to the Liberals’ loss on election day.
5. Shawinigate
In 2001, National Post reporter Andrew McIntosh received a plain brown envelope (always a reliable source of information) containing a document that appeared to show Jean Chretien had illegally helped a friend obtain a loan to build a golf resort in Shawinigan, QC. Chretien, the bank involved, and the RCMP all said it was a forgery and obtained a warrant to get McIntosh to hand over the source of the envelope. The Post fought the warrant but the Supreme Court ruled last year that McIntosh had to divulge his source, a distressing development for journalists who assert protecting sources’ identity is a key part of getting information.
6. NOW on trial
Believe it not, NOW Magazine is no stranger to controversy. Sure, there was that whole Rob Ford cover dust-up, but that was peanuts compared to the paper’s early history. In 1990 police showed up at the NOW office and arrested publishers Michael Hollett and Alice Klein (and her mother!) on solicitation charges stemming from the escort service ads in the back of the paper. Hollett and Klein were facing six months in prison, but lawyer Clayton Ruby got the charges dropped at the first court appearance and NOW lived to publish for another 21 years, and counting.
