Toronto Star contributing columnist Justin Ling’s article about overhearing a Liberal cabinet minister on the phone trying to quell a possible caucus revolt against Justin Trudeau, was eye-popping and salacious.
Ling, a Montreal-based, independent investigative journalist, recounted how days after the Liberals’ byelection loss of the long-held Toronto-St. Paul’s riding late last month, he found himself unexpectedly seated beside Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault in the Via Rail business lounge at Union Station in Toronto.
While they were waiting to board a train for the five-hour ride to Montreal, Guilbeault engaged in loud telephone calls with Liberal insiders on the other end of the line. The minister was on his cell, using wireless headphones.
Among numerous comments referring to a potential uprising in the party against Prime Minister Trudeau, Guilbeault said on the phone, for all within earshot to hear: “if we’re not trying to address it, it will fester” — one of the many nuggets in Ling’s bombshell article.
In a public place, with people he didn’t know around him, Guilbeault delved into sensitive details about Trudeau’s leadership. The minister was, as Ling reported, feeling around for who in the party might call for Trudeau to pack it in, post byelection trouncing.
Ling found himself in a very interesting situation, one I would say after hearing details from the author this week, veered into the realm of the strange. More on that later.
The lengthy article provided a rare glimpse into the inner sanctum workings of the Liberal party machine, a party struggling mightily in the polls now, with rank-and-file and senior cabinet members frantically trying to figure out who can best lead the party toward the next federal election.
But not all our readers were impressed with Ling’s column.
Questioning the integrity of the article, one reader, Greg, chastised the Star and Ling in a recent email to my office.
Greg said that while the minister should have been “smarter” than to discuss such a subject in public in case journalists were around, there were “questionable ethics by a columnist or reporter to sit beside a cabinet minister and report on a conversation without identifying himself.”
In a follow up email, Greg said: “Grey area, admittedly, but not sure how it squares with the ‘identifying ourselves’ section of your journalistic standards.”
As public editor I’m going to state upfront that Ling did nothing wrong in the way he gathered information for and reported on what happened in the Toronto train station.
I spoke to Ling on the phone this week to get a bit of background on how the situation unfolded. He told me that while seated in the lounge at Union Station waiting to board, he spotted Guilbeault, who Ling believes he may have interviewed in press scrums in the past.
“I thought he was going to come up and say ‘hi’ ” Ling told me.
“Then he walked right past me and sat in the chair next to me, already on his phone call,” Ling told me.
“I know for a fact that he was talking to members of caucus while he was on his trip in Toronto,” Ling said. Ling isn’t sure Guilbeault was talking to those caucus members during the conversations he overheard, but he did say the cabinet minister was speaking at “full volume” levels on his phone call. Ling was thinking Guilbeault was being “reckless.”
As public editor I have to add that this behaviour by Guilbeault strikes me, quite frankly, as bizarre.
Ling added that while in the train station he wasn’t sure Guilbeault recognized him.
Ling continued: “I wasn’t the only one sitting there. There were three other people kind of milling about and sitting in chairs opposite him. All of whom at various points kept looking at (Guilbeault, as if to say) ‘Boy, this man is having a loud conversation.’ ”
So much so that Ling thought another media outlet might very well have heard about the minister’s comments and get a story out before his.
To make a long story short, Guilbeault later left the seating area and got on the train; Ling carefully wrote out notes, called around to several Liberal party sources, including MPs and the PMO’s office, verified his story about Guilbeault’s efforts to quell an uprising, and sent a direct message to Guilbeault about what he had. Ling also travelled back to Montreal on the train.
The minister saw Ling’s note, but didn’t reply directly to Ling.
Instead, Guilbeault released a statement after the article ran, basically saying that “one-sided conversations taken out of context” don’t reflect the honest exchanges he often has with his caucus colleagues.
The Star’s journalistic standards guide doesn’t speak directly to the scenario of what a reporter is required to do in a situation such as this. (I didn’t see anything specific from other media outlets either online.)
And the section in our standards guide on “identifying ourselves and undercover reporting” doesn’t capture a situation where a public official makes comments in the public interest for everyone to hear — in a public place.
As public editor I conclude the minister had a duty of care to ensure that when he was discussing this sensitive subject matter he did so in a safe, quiet place — not out in the open in a train station with many ears around.
“In our view, Mr. Ling’s reporting was ethical. The minister, who was speaking audibly in a busy train station lounge, had no reasonable expectation of privacy,” said Jordan Himelfarb, the Star’s opinion editor, head of our editorial board and the senior Star editor who handled Ling’s piece
“Mr. Ling did not use clandestine means to gather his facts, and he gave the minister — and everyone else named in the story — an opportunity to respond. We were very comfortable,” Himelfarb told me.
Ivor Shapiro, an expert on journalistic standards and professor emeritus, senior fellow and scholar in residence at the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), agrees the minister didn’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy in this scenario.
“I think that a veteran politician speaking on a matter of public interest in a public place has to know members of the public may be listening,” Shapiro told me. “I think a senior politician would be (unwise) to make the assumption they are speaking in private.”
I agree.
