Toronto Star
Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale pushed back Wednesday against repeated suggestions from Toronto’s mayor Rob Ford that Dale is a pedophile.
“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’s latest comment came from an interview with Conrad Black that aired Monday night in Canada. The Star’s Robin Doolittle wrote about the interview Tuesday, in which Ford also accused Toronto’s chief of police of going after Ford for retribution.
Ford also implied Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale was a pedophile for what Ford described as taking pictures outside the mayor’s Etobicoke house.
“Daniel Dale is in my backyard taking pictures. I have little kids,” Ford told Black on a taped interview that aired on Vision TV Monday night.
“He’s taking pictures of little kids. I don’t want to say that word but you start thinking what this guy is all about.”
The incident happened May 2, 2012, Dale reports, when he was in property adjacent to Ford’s, “reporting a story about Ford’s rare application to buy public land.” He will continue to report on Ford, Dale wrote, and hasn’t yet decided whether he’ll sue for libel.
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: [Ford’s brother] 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.
