The Star on why it published Ford story

Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke and investigative reporter Kevin Donovan appeared before the Ontario Press Council on Monday to answer questions about a story alleging Mayor Rob Ford had been seen on video smoking what appeared to be crack cocaine.

“Rob Ford in ‘crack cocaine’ video scandal” ran on May 17. The mayor later denied the allegation, saying he doesn’t use crack cocaine, nor is he a crack addict.

Click here to read our coverage on the hearing.

Below, Cooke and Donovan respond to questions from the council.

Did the Star only publish this story because the U.S. website Gawker did?

“The answer to that is definitive: No. We were working on this story long before Gawker had ever heard of Rob Ford,” Cooke said.

However, the Gawker story did affect our timeline, Cooke acknowledged.

“Once there’s something reported by an American website about the mayor of our city, we felt the Toronto public should know what the largest paper in this country knew about the matter – which was a lot.  And a lot more than Gawker.”

Cooke said the paper does not have the video but that did not affect the publication of the story.

“We would have preferred to have secured that video before publication and we’re still working on securing that video, but we did not rush the story into publication at the sacrifice of any of the Toronto Star’s values and standards…”

“The Star conducted itself within our self-imposed ethical standards and we reported and published that story within the legal and ethical boundaries set by our country’s Supreme Court. The story was true back on May 17 and it’s true today.”

Anonymity of sources

Donovan said the sources behind the video came forward after a story on the Garrison military ball.  Ford was reportedly asked to leave the Feb. 23 ball because he was intoxicated.

“The first thing [the sources] said was that they were concerned for their safety. They had information for us,” Donovan said.

“It was not something we gave lightly but we did, ultimately, give this person a promise of confidentiality…We don’t give them lightly but once we do, we don’t retract them.”

The promise was made, he said, in the public interest.

“We think there is a great public interest in exploring” whether the mayor of Canada’s largest city is involved with people in the drug trade, Donovan said, adding he would not identify the source without the source’s permission.

Could the video be fake?

“Until the night of April 18 [when Star reporters viewed the alleged video], I certainly had concerns about,” whether the source was lying about having the video, Donovan said. That was a month before the story was published.

“That evening [after seeing the video] my concerns vanished,” he said.

“Up until the time I saw it, I was saying, ‘there was no way this video could be out there’ … I just did not believe he could get himself into a situation where he would be videotaped.”

The cost of creating a fake video would be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not in the millions, Donovan said. The CBC reached a similar conclusion.

Ford’s own lawyer “failed to challenge the existence of the video,” Donovan said.

Lawyer Dennis Morris told Donovan the story was “false and defamatory” and added, “how can you indicate what the person is actually doing or smoking.”

“It’s not a denial,” Donovan said Monday.