The public cannot accept Police Chief Bill Blair’s account of the 911 calls Mayor Rob Ford made after a This Hour Has 22 Minutes comedian surprised him in his driveway, the CBC’s ombudsman says.

The ombudsman, Kirk LaPointe, found that the CBC did not violate its journalistic standards in its reporting on Ford’s calls — though he also says he isn’t sure that its stories, which relied on anonymous sources, were correct.

“On one hand, CBC News is a major media organization with a reputation for high-quality investigative and precision journalism as part of its public mission,” LaPointe, a former newspaper editor and broadcast news executive, wrote in a report released Friday. “On the other hand, the chief of police is a major public figure expected to perform impeccable service. In this matter only one of them is right. It just isn’t clear whom.”

Blair’s Oct. 28 statement on the calls should not be considered the definitive final word, LaPointe argued. Blair’s independence, he wrote, was compromised by Ford’s key role in setting the police budget.

“In view of the fact that the Toronto Police Service depends on budget deliberations headed by the mayor, and in view of the fact this year’s police budget that averted layoffs was reached only in the week before this incident, I concluded the CBC could not rest on Blair’s account. Not only were its sources adamant about their information, the chief was not a disinterested party,” he wrote.

Police spokesperson Mark Pugash strongly criticized that assertion. It is “offensive,” Pugash said, for LaPointe to suggest the police budget had any influence on Blair’s statement.

“Chief Blair listened to the calls, the CBC did not. Chief Blair’s account is accurate and truthful, he stands by what he said, and Mr. LaPointe’s suggestion that the ongoing budget process makes the chief ‘not a disinterested party’ is completely wrong,” he said.

LaPointe wrote that he could not determine whether the CBC’s stories were accurate without access to the tape of the disputed call. Absent that proof, he wrote, “there remain questions about this episode that may never be answered.”

Ford, who has rejected much of the CBC’s account, has the right to release the tape. He has declined to do so.

Criticism of the CBC's reporting has centred upon a profane comment its reports claimed Ford had made to a police dispatcher on Oct. 24 when he called to ask why officers had not yet responded to his first call. Citing multiple anonymous sources, the reports claimed Ford had said, “You…bitches! Don’t you f---ing know? I’m Rob f---ing Ford, the mayor of this city!”

Ford acknowledged using the “f-word” but said he never used the word “bitch” and never used his name in a “conceited manner.” Blair said in his statement that Ford “did not use the word ‘bitches’” and “did not describe himself as the original account claimed.”

LaPointe is employed by the CBC but independent of the news division. He wrote that the CBC’s reporting, including its use of anonymous sources, satisfied its policies on good journalism.

Ford was approached the morning of Oct. 24 by comedian Mary Walsh, who was dressed in the warrior costume of her This Hour has 22 Minutes character Marg Delahunty. Holding a microphone with the show’s logo on it, she stood close to him, peppered him with jokes and touched his back and shoulder as he got into his minivan. He smiled but appeared annoyed.

In a statement he released the day of the CBC reports, he said he had been “attacked.” He said the behaviour of Walsh and a CBC camera operator was “traumatic” for his daughter, whom he had been preparing to take to school.

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“Concerned for my safety and that of my family, I called 911 for help and retreated into my home,” he said in the statement. He apologized for “inappropriately” expressing his frustration with the police.

Ford’s spokesperson and a CBC spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment on Friday.

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