The Day the News Died

I’m not sure of the date. It could have been April 18, 2011. It could have been December 1, 2010. But whenever it was, it was the day the newspaper business died in Toronto.

Okay, maybe not died. But at least went to hell in a hand basket.

I’m talking about the simmering feud between the Sun and the Star that has set newspaper standards back nearly a century. At its core the rift is about ideologies and right vs. left politics, but economic factors that have been bleeding ad revenues for years have also conspired to ramp up the dispute to what I, as a newspaperman of long standing, consider to be intolerable levels.

The two newspapers have always sat across the great divide, but it always seemed that journalistic integrity would not be sacrificed for the sake of headlines or profit margins. But all that changed when Rob Ford found himself inexplicably elected mayor 29 months ago.

That seems to be the day the Star lost its mind and with its attacks on Ford deteriorating into a witch hunt of late, it looks like they lost any clear vision of newspaper ethics as well.

For the Sun, it was the launch of the Sun News Network two years ago that put them over the top. Always feisty, always right wing, the little paper that grew clearly grew tired of the Star’s circulation dominance – not to mention its left wing stance – and decided that a television station was the way to change that.

Problem was, the Toronto Sun lost its editorial balance in the process.

The newspaper that was born in 1971 from the ashes of the Toronto Telegram has always been opinionated, with much of its strength derived from its powerful stable of columnists. Sure, as a right wing newspaper most of those columnists took small ‘c’ conservative positions, but the Sun also prided itself on hiring writers with contrarian points of view.

This is a paper that employed Walter Stewart and Doug Fischer – both late, great bastions of the left – as well as Heather Mallick, who won two national newspaper awards for the newspaper in the 1990s. Heck, even Sheila Copps wrote for the Sun.

Today it is shrill voices from the ultra right – straight from the Sun News studios – that dominate the editorial pages. As for alternate voices, the Sun tolerates occasional columns by Sid Ryan and Edward Greenspan for appearances. But that’s it.

If it was just the opinion pages it wouldn’t be so bad, but that ultra-right slant has filtered down to the regular reporting. And that’s just sad.

The Star, meanwhile, has been incessantly braying for Ford’s head since his election victory. They tried ousting him over the Don Bosco fundraising issue and when that didn’t work they moved on to ass-gate, followed by drunken moron-gate.

Enough is enough. I get that you don’t like Ford, I get that he’s a buffoon. I think the voters of Toronto were looking for a bit of Ralph Klein’s populism when they voted for Ford, but got Chris Farley instead. So yeah, I think most people get it.

But please. Try to remember not to leave your journalistic standards at the door in your quest to get him removed from office.

It was the Toronto Star that hired Pierre Burton and Greg Clark, launched the career of Ernest Hemingway, and inspired the birth of Superman, for crying out loud. Thanks to Joe Atkinson, who ran the Star for nearly half a century, the newspaper has a long history of being a champion of social justice issues.

But that track record only goes so far.

Star media columnist Antonia Zerbisias once wrote that Star staffers have the Atkinson Principles – and its associated values – “tattooed on our butts”. That’s “fine with me,” she added. “At least we are upfront about our values, and they almost always work in favour of building a better Canada."

Seriously? Don’t you think the people who publish the Toronto Sun feel the same way about their principles?

In about a year-and-a-half Ford will be gone from the Mayor’s chair. In the meantime both sides need to chill and get back to what they used to do best: producing great newspapers.