OTTAWA — The mayor of Toronto has boycotted one of Canada's largest newspapers, in a feud that many media experts say is likely a first in our country's history.
"This is quite an extraordinary event," said Jeff Sallot, a journalism professor at Carleton University. "An elected official, the most important municipal official in Canada's largest city, going to war with Canada's largest newspaper. I can't recall another thing like this in Canada."
On Thursday, in a front page opinion piece written by John Honderich, chair of TorStar's board of directors, the newspaper announced it would file a formal complaint over the "Ford freeze" — Toronto Mayor Rob Ford's refusal, since he won the mayoral race over a year ago, to provide the newspaper with official notices or news releases.
The Star reported the Ford's boycott stems from his "rage over a piece the Star ran during the mayoral election campaign about his conduct as a football coach." Ford threatened to sue the newspaper for libel, but never followed up.
In an interview with Postmedia News, Honderich said he decided to write the opinion piece when, after more than a year of it going on, a city councillor's motions to try to rectify the Ford freeze were "shelved."
"I was disturbed because I think there is a fundamental principle here at play in terms of giving all members of the gallery access to public documents," said Honderich. " I find it an abuse of the process."
While politicians often avoid speaking to certain media outlets, the former publisher of the Toronto Star said he has never encountered a politician target one specific media organization with a boycott.
"Mayor Ford has the perfect prerogative not to speak to the Star, but I've never seen a media outlet cut off from receiving information," said Honderich. "I think it's very unusual. Very unusual."
But, on Friday, the mayor's office denied the Star's claims of a "freeze."
In a statement, the office said, "the Toronto Star receives all notifications, press releases, media advisories from the City of Toronto.
"Their reporters are welcomed into the mayor's office during media availabilities with the rest of the press gallery."
In the same breath, while speaking on a Toronto radio news talk show on Friday morning, Ford urged Torontonians to join him in his Star boycott.
"I have no respect for the Toronto Star whatsoever," he said. "If people want to read a paper, pick up the Globe, Post or Sun. That's what I encourage people to do."
If Ford did in fact block the Toronto Star from access to news conferences, press releases, and interviews, it's not only unethical but a "dumb political move," said Sallot.
"It reminds you of Richard Nixon's enemies list, which included a number of prominent journalists in the United States," said Sallot.
In a memo dated Nov. 30, 1970, a White House aide to the then U.S. president suggested they prepare "a list of those who are and will continue to be our major opponents" with a purpose to "screw" his political enemies through tax audits. The "enemies list" included politicians, reporters and entertainers.
Sallot — who served as the Globe and Mail's bureau chief in Edmonton, Ottawa and Moscow — said media boycotts are much more commonplace in developing nations.
Last year, Reporters Without Borders said it was concerned about what it saw as discriminatory behaviour from the Mauritian government towards the country's leading newspaper, La Sentinelle. In a May 2010 blog post, the organization claimed the government had recently excluded La Sentinelle's journalists from a news conference held by the finance minister.
In February, the Jakarta Post reported that an Indonesian politician publicly accused three local media outlets of bias, and called for the government to boycott them. The media outlets filed complaints over the comments, to which the politician responded by accusing them of defamation and warning them to never attend any of his news conferences.
But media boycotts in Canada? Not a common scene, said Sallot.
In 2010, a St. John's Telegram blog post reported that Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams seemed to be refusing interviews with the local CBC News.
According to the Telegram, Williams' communications spokeswoman, Elizabeth Matthews, told them the boycott arose after comments made on the CBC about Williams' U.S. heart surgery that were "irrelevant and hurtful to his family."
But the incident didn't appear to go as far as refusing to deliver news releases and invitations to news conferences.
Canadian journalists are more likely to encounter a communications officer requesting a list of their questions prior to an interview with a government official.
In Windsor, Ont., the city is adopting a new media policy under which media questions to civic employees will have to be "vetted" by the city's corporate communications team or an approved trained senior manager.
A report on the new policy states it will "reduce anxiety and pressure by taking away the unknown."
Windsor Star staff told Postmedia News that one city councillor, a former journalist, called the policy a "gag order."
But does vetting media questions, which usually do eventually get answered after careful scrutiny and inspection, limit media access?
Not as much as outright refusing to answer questions, said Concordia journalism professor Alan Conter.
Conter likened Rob Ford's war against the Star to Prime Minister Stephen Harper's tight limits on media access during the recent election race, during which he only allowed five questions from reporters at each daily news conference during campaigning.
"With the five questions, it isn't just vetting questions, it is limiting access to the prime minister," said Conter. "So it is effectively blocking access to a whole bunch of people."
The concept, said Conter, seems to have inspired Ford in his war against the Star. But it goes against the democratic duty of public officials, he added.
"Public officials in a democratic country have the duty, if not to answer all the questions of every reporter, at least to disseminate amongst all media press briefings, announcements, all that sort of thing," said Conter. "To cherry-pick who you send your releases to is fundamentally undemocratic."
In 2006, in the months after Harper first became prime minister, many journalists in the Parliamentary Press Gallery became increasingly frustrated with what they saw as his aides deliberately limiting information to the media about the prime minister's travels, restricting media access to cabinet ministers and trying to control which reporters got to question the prime minister at formal and informal news conferences.
Carleton journalism professor Barbara Freeman, who teaches a course on the history of Canadian media, said she is unaware of any similar past incidents of politicians barring one media outlet from news releases and conferences.
"It does remind me of 18th century press environment in Canada when newspaper editors were almost totally reliant on government contracts to get by financially, and therefore were expected to toe the prerequisite political line," she added, in an email.
"So I guess we can say that Ford is being oh-so-three centuries ago."
Still, Freeman said she does believe Toronto taxpayers, some of whom are also Toronto Star readers, do have a right to be informed about city hall happenings.
Conter said he doesn't expect to see Ford's media boycott become a trend in the national political landscape.
The Toronto Star has managed to keep up its city hall coverage, despite apparently not being informed of events, mostly because competing outlets have passed on the information, he said.
"Journalists have their own sort of rivalries and jealousies, but when government or even a corporation decides to boycott one major outlet, it just gets everybody else in the pack riled up and pretty eager to bring that particular person or corporation down," he said.
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