By Frank Moher
Monday’s New York Times contained an article with the hed Trial of Black Raises Conflict Issue, about the game of Twister that Maclean’s has gotten itself into trying to cover the proceedings. It noted that Lady Black is the magazine’s star columnist, and both main trial correspondent Mark Steyn and publisher and editor-in-chief Kenneth Whyte are former employees of Black’s (not to mention editor Mark Stevenson, managing editors Dianne de Fenoyl and Dianna Symonds, and, for all I know, members of the janitorial staff). And Whyte, of course, just finished up a stint as a witness for the defence, filling in the glamour quotient as best he could, given that Donald Trump wasn’t called to testify after all.
In the interest of full disclosure I should mention that I, too, have been an employee of Black’s, when I worked as an editor for Saturday Night for two stints in the late ’90s. I also freelanced for both SN and The National Post during Black and Whyte’s tenures there. (I still do so for the latter.) The difference between me and those others is this: they got paid way more, and I live on a small island off the coast of BC and so don’t have to worry about running into any of these people at a cocktail party.
Whyte told the Times, “Mr. Steyn has informed me that he plans to prove his journalistic integrity by treating me twice as harshly as other witnesses.” I’m sure we can enjoy a good chortle right along with the two of them. But the best that Steyn has been able to come up with in the way of criticism of Whyte has been to assay that “in Thursday’s testimony Ken was a bit too rueful and self-deprecating and that, in response to Ms Ruder’s dimestore dominatrix style of cross-examination, something a bit more combative might be more called for.” In other words, Whyte was just too nice a guy, and why did that mean Ms. Ruder have to pick on him? And this was after the Times had raised the issue of their chumhood.
Of course, the skein of mutually supportive relationships identified in the Times is just standard practice for the clusterfuck known as the Toronto media. Or, as Kelly McBride, a “journalism ethics specialist” at the Poynter Institute, helpfully explained it away: “A lot of journalists marry other journalists, are children of other journalists, and it looks very suspicious to outsiders.” Don’t it just. McBride goes on to suggest that, in order to judge the impartiality of a journalist who’s writing about friends and associates you should look at what’s on the page. But that’s only one measure of impartiality. The other is what isn’t on the page.
For example, how is it that neither Steyn nor anyone else, as far as I can see, has asked what Ken Whyte was doing taking $100,000 from Conrad Black in 2003? This was almost two years after Black had completely divested himself of his ownership of the Post, but before Whyte had been fired as editor by its new owners, CanWest Global. In his testimony, Whyte first described this as a “performance bonus” (paid out 18 months late?), then later acknowledged that it was also paid because Black wanted to maintain their relationship. (Hmm, I wonder if that would work with my wife: “Wanna maintain our relationship, honey? It’s gonna cost ya.”) Whatever; let’s give Black the benefit of the doubt and say that he just felt bad about selling the Post and leaving Whyte to twist in the wind. $100,000 worth of bad. But what was Whyte, as editor of the Post, doing accepting any money, much less a hundred grand, from a highly newsworthy and controversial public figure whom his paper would almost certainly be covering? Is that the way he runs Maclean’s?
I don’t say that either Whyte or Black had anything but the purest, most filial of intentions in making the deal. I just say that it was a highly dumb move on Whyte’s part. Steyn writes, vis-a-vis the New York Times story, that “all this media navel-gazing about ‘conflicts of interest’ ignores the obvious: as I’ve said before, I have no financial interest in defending Conrad and nor does Ken. He signed our paycheques, but that was long ago now.” Well, that $100,000 wasn’t no paycheque. And exactly when does the statute of limitations on financial interests run out?
Dear Frank: You ask what I was doing taking $100,000 from Black in 2003, almost two years after Black had sold the National Post. It is entirely true that I received the money at the beginning of 2003. It is also a fact that I was awarded the bonus in 2001. As I testified in discovery for my lawsuit against Hollinger — the same testimony referenced by prosecutors in the Black trial — Black informed me that I would receive the bonus shortly after he sold his final stake in the Post: “August of 2001,” I said under oath, “was when the announcement of the second 50 percent being sold was made. It wasn’t long after that.” Elsewhere in the same testimony I said that I was awarded the bonus “sometime not too long after the announcement,” and certainly “before December” of that year. I was still under contract to Hollinger throughout this period. I did not receive an employment letter from CanWest until January 2, 2002. The first paragraph of that document states: “This will outline the terms and conditions of employment with which we want to go forward with you. Since the transaction to acquire 50% of the National Post does not close until March 31, 2002, we are writing this in the capacity of manager, soon to be 100% owner.” There was nothing untoward about my accepting a performance bonus from Hollinger while employed by Hollinger.
While the bonus was promised me towards the end of 2001, I didn’t receive it until the end of 2002 — a few months, not years, after I left Black’s employ. I gave an explanation for Black’s delay in my testimony for the lawsuit: “Dealing with Conrad, he had a very precise memory but he wasn’t always quick about things, and so I was always reminding him about things to do with my compensation and my deal. From the time I started with him, he always needed a nudge.” To the same point, it took Black a year from the time I started working full-time on the National Post to arrange my compensation as a Post employee (I was paid under the terms of my Saturday Night agreement in the interim). I think I was the last of the “day one” National Post employees to come to terms with the company precisely because I was the only one who dealt directly with Black.
As I testified during my lawsuit against Hollinger, I received the $100,000 bonus cheque in the mail towards the end of 2002 and deposited it in my bank, taking receipt of the funds, early in 2003.
During my cross-examination at the Black trial, prosecutors made selective use of my testimony from the lawsuit, noting simply that the Post was sold in 2001 and that I received my bonus in 2003. It is the job of prosecutors to attempt to damage the credibility of defense witnesses in the eyes of the jury. On redirect, Black’s lawyers were naturally more concerned with shoring up portions of my testimony relevant to their client than they were with filling gaps in my compensation history. As far as I could tell, they hadn’t read my testimony from the lawsuit. As a witness, I was only permitted to respond to questions asked. None of the reporters or columnists or bloggers who mentioned my bonus thought to contact me before publishing.
As for your thoughts on conspiracies in media circles, I couldn’t agree more. Standing outside the Chicago courtroom one day, I noticed that all of the assembled print reporters — NY Times, NY Post, Globe & Mail, Toronto Star, Toronto Sun, National Post — had worked for me in some capacity at some point in their careers. They all mentioned my appearance in their articles. Not one of them remarked on my brilliance as a witness. Obviously, the fix was in.
Great stuff. Kudos. Maclean’s coverage of the trial stinks of self dealing from A to Z. If conrad walks the ensuing “clusterfuck” will produce a satanic spawn of self congratulation biblical in proportion.