On Wednesday, CBC As It Happens host Carol Off interviewed Conrad Black about his high profile sit down with Toronto Mayor Rob Ford that aired Monday night on Vision TV.

The two hosts sparred over Black's treatment of Ford's suggestion in the Monday night interview that Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale is a pedophile. (The segment has since been pulled from the show’s website.)

Off took Black to task on his gentle handling of the mayor. Here is a transcript of that interview. (Mobile users can hear the full audio of the interview here .)

Carol Off : Lord Black, what were you trying to accomplish in your interview with Rob Ford?

Conrad Black : Just to create a somewhat human and civilized atmosphere. So he could say whatever he wanted to get off his chest. The nature of those conversations I have on that program are not combative interviews, they are just conversations. And he was very relaxed and I think he proceeded quite well, and he started out really avoiding some of the problems he’s had that I’ve seen at least, and previous encounters with media people where he knit picks and haggles with them. He openly acknowledged he made terrible and very embarrassing mistakes, and he apologized for it, so I thought we were off to a good start, that he bothered to acknowledge that.

Off : You mentioned that we have in common that we have a rabid adversary, meaning the media in general, and the Toronto Star in particular …

Black : I certainly didn’t say the media’s rabidly hostile, I said the Star is, but I don’t find most of them to be.

Off : And you mentioned sanctimonious attacks.

Black : Mhm.

Off : To what degree do you identify with Rob Ford?

Black : I identify with anyone who’s been crucified by the media and has been subjected to a certain lynching, and I’ve been through that myself, and I identify that I don’t like it, it’s no fun, and it’s not a good thing to have. Whatever mistakes he or I or you or anyone else commits, we have to pay for them, and I don’t think paying for them in that way is appropriate. There’s some identification with that, but on the other hand, there’s no question, and he admits this himself, he’s aggravated his problems himself by his very unwise, as he’s said so himself, silly and juvenile response to some of it. I think a very large number of your listeners identify in the abstract with an underdog and a person going through a difficult time, but that is the extent of it. I certainly don’t have any identification with drug problems. I sympathize with it, but I’ve never been in that position myself, and nor have I ever been in public in a drunken condition such as he has been.

Off : Do you think that Rob Ford has been a victim of rumour and innuendo?

Black : I think he has chiefly been a victim of himself. But he said it himself, it’s extremely unwise doing things that are completely unacceptable for a person in his position, and indeed unacceptable generally, but I think he has been victim to an excessive degree of almost frenzied moralizing, and that awful feeding frenzy you get when there’s an enthusiasm that tears someone down completely, particularly to destroy the holder of a high public office.

Off : How damaging is it to be accused of things in the media or have slanderous things suggested about you in the media?

Black : Well it depends if there’s any truth in them or not, obviously truth is a defence against defamation, slander or libel, so it is very damaging if it is true that you’ve done terrible things. But the damage isn’t the fact that it’s recorded and referred to; it is that you did it in the first place. But then it is certainly damaging to have supplementary, fictitious slander or libel. In the mayor’s case, I don’t think anyone knows the extent to what he’s done bad things and the extent to which he’s been falsely accused, but it’s a combination of the two, and unfortunately it has been damaging, but you can get over it you know, and people do recover from defamations, I know something about that myself.

Off : You know something about that, you know how damaging it is, and yet when Rob Ford said that Daniel Dale, a Toronto Star reporter, Rob Ford said, “I have little kids. When a guy is taking pictures of little kids, I don’t want to say the word, but you start thinking, what’s this guy all about?” What other word is there but the word “pedophile?”

Black : Peeping Tom.

Off : Pervert.

Black : Well, yeah—

Off : Rob Ford said that Daniel Dale he believed to be a pervert.

Black : You’re asking me a question. If you’re going to answer your own questions, you needn’t have phoned me at all. I think there’s room for a greater variety of interpretations and levels of perversion if you insist on using that word, but I took it as the lower end where it was trespassing, snooping, and excessive, not necessarily maladjusted or psychiatrically unbalanced curiosity. Now perhaps I’m just being a benign optimist, but I know that I’ve been roundly accused in the sorts of places you would imagine I might be, for not leaping to the defence of the Toronto Star reporter, but the fact is, Carol, I don’t know if you’re a parent, but many of your listeners would be, and I don’t think that any of us who have or had at one time young children under the age of ten would be particularly pleased about seeing some stranger out leering over the back fence looking at them, and that’s a disturbing thing. I’m afraid I don’t get on board here the transposition of the status of the aggrieved party on this particular instance from Mr. Mayor to Mr. Dale. I have no grievance to Mr. Dale. I quoted his figures on my analysis of the budget performance of the Ford administration quite respectfully, and I thought he did a good report on that. I don’t know him apart from that. It is disturbing that total strangers are doing that, but it is disturbing that total strangers are doing that over your backyard.

Off : What evidence is there that he did that?

Black : Well, I was taking the Mayor’s word for it.

Off : Uh huh. But you established with him that Rob Ford does lie. He admitted he lies.

Black : But he doesn’t always lie.

Off : But if he’s suggesting that someone’s a pedophile or a pervert, is that not something where you ask him the obvious question?

Black : I did not take it that way at all. He wasn’t saying [Dale] was a pedophile.

Off : What other interpretation is there?

Black : I’ve just given you some Carol, I think you’re overdoing this. The fact is, the guy is a journalist, he is in some manner allegedly looking over the Fords’ back fence, he’s staring at young children playing in the yard. You don’t have to be a pedophile, you can just be unduly nosy, and frankly, lots of journalists are. And it is annoying to the person whose property is being spied on in that way. That doesn’t mean he’s a pedophile, I didn’t take that Ford was saying that.

Off : Actually Daniel Dale and the story has been investigated by the police about Dale being not on the property, but in the public area behind his property where he was taking pictures of a field, a public property that Mr. Ford would like to buy. He didn’t look over the fence, there were no kids in the yard that anyone knows of, and the police investigation said there was absolutely no substance to this. This was all reported a long time ago. You’re known for your research. Did you not know that this was completely wrong?

Black : I didn’t know any of that.

Off : So you accepted what Ford had to say?

Black : I mean, if your summary is correct, then the mayor lied. I still don’t see it as an allegation of pedophilia. It’s an overhasty leap out of the starting blocks to assume that, then certainly, if the account you just gave is accurate, then the mayor lied. And I would resent that if he did.

Off : The point here is that — and you established this with Rob Ford — if rumour and innuendo of suggesting slanderous things about people is damaging to them, is there a double standard when it’s a journalist who’s being slandered?

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Black : No. If that’s what he did, there’s no double standard. If that’s what he did, then he shouldn’t have done it. And indeed if what you just said is what happened, going back to my days in the study, in my brief days in the practice of law and certainly to my extensive experience in defamation matters, Mr. Dale would have a case against him.

Off : Questions…

Black : But his case isn’t against me. It’s not my duty to debate with the mayor, I was asking questions and he was giving the answers.

Off : But you allowed that to go on the air.

Black: I didn’t do the editing. I wasn’t going to leap from my chair and throttle the mayor. I was his guest in his office and he can say what he wants. And if he says slanderous things he’ll have to face the consequences of that and I don’t doubt the Star would not be hesitant to sue him if it really is a slander. But I think it’s a bit much to expect me to know that. I mean I haven’t made a study of every aspect of the mayor’s controversy. I was, in fact, when that was going on, on a trip around the world. I don’t hold myself out as an authority on municipal affairs. I did a fair amount of research. I put, I thought, relevant questions to the mayor and he answered them. It’s not for me to vouch for the truthfulness of his answers. But I don’t engage in a debating style in these things.

Off : You interviewed him on Friday and you aired the interview on Monday. You had three days. Was there no discussion between you and anyone else? Did anyone check and see if these facts were true?

Black : I haven’t the faintest idea.

Off: Was there any editorial discussion about editing out this part?

Black : No doubt. But I had nothing to do with it.

Off : You’re on it. You’re the one, You’re the face and the voice.

Black : Carol, you don’t have to tell me what my role is. But I would answer your question, I have nothing to do with editing. And by the way, the entire interview ran later in the day. At midnight. So there was no edit on that.

Off : At the same time, though, they could have edited out something that is slanderous. You had an opportunity to do it. But no one thought that they should.

Black : You’ll have to put that to the people who edit. I just put the questions.

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Off : There’s another section that was damaging to a reputation and that is when Rob Ford said to you that he believed the police were investigating Sandro Lisi, this one person with whom he’s associated, and did a very elaborate and expensive investigation into illegal drugs sales just to get at Rob Ford for reasons of politics, he says for political reasons. Why didn’t you ask him for his evidence?

Black : Because I was asking for his opinion. And I was specifically asking what he thought the motive was for the chief to take the unusual position of saying in a press conference that he personally as a citizen was disappointed in the mayor. Because I thought that was improper and I still think it was improper. I’m not hostile to the chief and I’m certainly not hostile to the police. I think they are a good force. But I thought that that was not within the purview of the chief of police’s jurisdiction to do that. He’s not engaged to opine on the character and personality of public officials. And I was asking the mayor what he thought the motive for the apparent hostility of the chief was. And I asked him if he thought that his refusal to accede to the chief’s request for a $21 million budget increase was part of it. And he said it was. And he elaborated. Well I don’t think it would be appropriate for me at that point to demand to know what his evidence is. I was asking for his opinion.

Off : It’s a simple journalistic question. How do you know that?

Black : How do I know what?

Off : When you ask when somebody says something, the chief of police launches an expensive investigation just to get at Rob Ford for political reasons, there’s a simple question: How do you know that Mr. Ford?

Black : No. I was asking his opinion. He was giving his opinion. I assumed it was sort of his intuition.

Off: You have sued a lot of people, haven’t you? For libel and slander.

Black : Yeah. And always successfully.

Off : Ah ha. And is it not the responsibility of those who are doing journalism, putting things on the air to know that things that are put on are accurate?

Black : Um, certainly it is the responsibility of anyone who is engaged in commenting or facilitating comments on people in a way that could affect their reputation to act responsibly and I don’t think that I varied from that at all. The fact is, it is terribly annoying to have the media snooping around your house. I’ve had it, I’ve had helicopters flying over my house at low altitudes for hours on end. It is unutterably annoying. And I have some sympathy for him. And I think the prima facia case here is that the mayor was being bothered. And I certainly take note of your view there is another version of events at drastic variance with his. As I said, if the mayor deliberately misled the viewers and did not tell me the truth, lied in fact, I would resent that very much and I’ll comment on it. But I had no reason to believe that’s the case.

Off : You had three days to find out if it was true or not and you didn’t.

Black : No. I don’t do that. I do the interview. I don’t do the rest of it.

Off : You do a lot of research. Do you not think that should be . . .

Black : Will you stop harping on that. Yes I do a lot of research. I’m writing the history of Canada right now, with thousands of footnotes. I know a lot about research. But I conduct the interviews and there are a lot of other people in that company who do the professional follow up on that.

Off : You’re passing the buck.

Black : No. I’m not passing the buck. At that particular place, Zoomer, I have a function. I do the function. I’m paid to do the function. I’m not paid to edit it.

Off : Your co-host on this program is my former boss Denise Donlan and I think that she would say it is my responsibility to make sure that what I say and what goes on the air in my interviews is accurate.

Black : I really don’t know what she said. She hasn’t said that to me.

Off : That accuracy isn’t important?

Black : No no, Carol. Please. I can scarcely credit my ears that you’re attempting to lead me into such a minefield as that. Of course accuracy is important. I didn’t say anything inaccurate.

Off : You said back in May, you did an interview with the Toronto Star and you said that Rob Ford was an embarrassment and that the city shouldn’t put up with this. Do you still believe that?

Black : Yes. I certainly believe it. I think that his conduct was very embarrassing. So does he. And of course it doesn’t have to put up with it. Where I take issue with some people is, I don’t think there is any grounds that I have been able to discern for removing him in office in mid-term other than a successful legal challenge under the statutes. And unless that can be done, the man is entitled to finish the term he was elected to serve. I gather it has been imputed to me that I am aligned with Ford and I am a supporter of his for re-election. That is not the case and I never said any such thing and that would not in fact be my view unless his opponent was somebody that was just really terribly unacceptable. But the fact is I don’t see any reason for trying to hound him from office without due legal process and I believe that to some degree that is what some people are trying to do.

Off : I think it’s fair to say you weren’t exactly channeling your inner Jeremy Paxman in this interview and it was a soft interview you would concede that, would you not?

Black : A soft interview? Yeah. Well these ones are. They are not really interviews. They are conversations and people accept my invitation to talk with me on the understanding that I am not going to try and Paxmanize them, taking up your terminology. You will recall. Paxman and I are perfectly friendly personally. And after that interview which I imagine you are referring to a year ago he asked me to sign my book for him, which I was happy to do. I don’t like that style where you get in someone’s face and you are unnecessarily belligerent and aggressive with them. That’s not what I do. I promise invitees onto our program that I won’t do that. But that does not mean that I’ll not ask them any questions, the answers to which they might find embarrassing.

Off : But at some point, were you not even curious to know about the more serious revelations in the police documents that indicate that Mr. Ford had a relationship with various underworld figures?

Black : No, I would be curious to know more about that. And I think it’s a worrisome matter.

Off : Why didn’t you ask him then?

Black : Because he volunteered that he’d had some associations that were inappropriate and I thought that since he’d volunteered that that I’d just be flogging a dead horse.

Off : Were you not curious to pursue that a bit further? It sounds like you had something maybe something that nobody else had?

Black: No, I think everyone’s had that. I think everyone who is concerned with these matters is really, perhaps I’m not overstating it to say shocked that the mayor would socialize with some of the undesirable people that he did. But since he’s acknowledged that, as I said, I didn’t see that my purpose was to humiliate him superfluously since he’d already taken it upon himself to confess and apologize for that and for a lot of other things.

Off : Lord Black, thank you for coming on the program.

This interview was edited for length.

Off : Were you not curious to pursue that a bit further? It sounds like you had something maybe something that nobody else had?

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