I was generous. I didn’t call the mayor a liar.
Perhaps he was somehow misled by an excitable neighbour. Perhaps he somehow thought he saw something he didn’t see. He tried to get me arrested, to destroy my career; I decided to correct him gently, deferentially.
Not any more. Not 19 months later. Rob Ford is lying about me, he knows it, and it’s vile.
Ford spoke to Conrad Black, the Vision TV host, about the encounter he had with me on May 2, 2012. Literally every single thing Ford told Black about my conduct that evening is false in some way.
I’ve received advice from a lawyer, but I haven’t yet decided whether to take legal action. For now, let’s review Ford’s words lie by lie:
Finally and crucially, there is the thing Ford did not quite say but strongly and unmistakably suggested: that I am a pedophile.
Doug Ford can deny all he wants that this was the mayor’s insinuation. It’s what just about everybody knows he insinuated. It’s the word that people are already attaching to my name in emails and Twitter posts. It’s the word that will now come up every time a prospective interviewee or new acquaintance Googles me.
It’s false. It’s malicious. It’s defamatory. It’s mind-boggling. It’s damn gross.
I’ve been advised by smart people to sue. I’m truly not yet sure what I will do.
On one hand: Ford’s words are obviously slanderous, my name is important to me, and I don’t take kindly to bullying. Most importantly, it seems clear to me that the slander will continue if I do not fight back now: Doug Ford publicly “jokes” about me “hiding in the bushes,” and refers to my “stalking,” at least once every two months; in the immediate aftermath of the incident, Rob Ford suggested I was “taking pictures of (his) kids and family,” and he wondered aloud if I was a “sicko.” The mayor’s comments to Black were his most repulsive yet, but they did not come out of the blue.
On the other hand, the Fords relish their fights with the media, and they are skilled at portraying themselves as victims even when they have been aggressors. I have no doubt the mayor would gleefully attempt to depict my effort to hold him to account as an attack on him by the Toronto Star.
I’ll make two things clear.
One: Whatever I do, I’ll continue to cover Ford with the non-grudge-bearing professionalism and courtesy I’ve shown him every day since the incident. My work will be no more affected by the mayor’s lies about me, or any effort I may make to challenge him on those lies, than it has been affected by the mayor’s lies about the many other things he has lied about over my three years on the city hall beat. I will not be forced out of my job because someone said an abhorrent thing about me, nor because I find it necessary to defend my reputation.
Two: If I do take legal action, the Star’s got nothing to do with it. In fact, if I were a businessman or teacher or anything other than a Toronto Star reporter, I would have served Ford with a libel notice already. I’m cautious because I don’t like being or staying the centre of attention, because I like my life the way it is, because it would be tiresome to listen to Ford’s claims of a vendetta, and because it seems like it would probably be unpleasant to find yourself in a long public spat with a wealthy and generally unrepentant person with good lawyers and a big megaphone.
No, Mayor Ford. If I sue, it has nothing to do with my place of employment. It’s about me, you, and your problem with the truth.
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