My last column about Toronto’s “gutless media” was not about the Toronto Star. But since some senior management at the paper want to make the Star and its reporters the issue, let’s engage.

From all across Canada, readers have emailed to add their voice to mine, offered in the strongest possible language. Pollsters, politicians, journalism professors, scribes, colleagues, venerable columnists and news personalities have written to say, “Thank you. . . Bravo!”

My bosses? They take offence that I didn’t initially give them a chance to explain why they refused to boycott the Rob Ford invitation-only press conference.

(Why I would give the Star that privilege and not afford the same to the Globe and Mail or the Toronto Sun cannot be explained, except to say all people or corporations slagged by columnists should be given a chance to respond to the opinion before it is published. Hmmmm. Let’s see how that works, going forward).

(Insert Star view here).

Management clings to the claim that my column would have had the effect of impugning the character of Star reporter Daniel Dale if managing editor Jane Davenport did not intervene to insert the fact that Dale tried — and failed — to get the Star to stage a boycott of the staged “news conference.”

It’s a huge stretch, of course. Dale was not the focus of the column; neither was the Star. In fact, Dale was the only reporter given props in the column when it was pointed out that he hurled questions at Ford, interrupting the propaganda.

Such corporate positioning dominates our daily journalistic lives. Political operatives and corporate spin doctors think they can explain their way out of every pickle. They think their crafted words will somehow change a columnist’s opinion of what is outrageous.

After meeting with Davenport and city editor Irene Gentle Wednesday, I’m even more contemptuous of last Monday’s media capitulation, characterized by one reader as Silly Putty in the hands of the master manipulator.

To recap, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford returned from rehab, held a news conference in which he said he would take no questions, staged the event in the smallest possible locale, limited the number of journalists, excluded the press gallery president and others. The chosen ones went in, “dutifully” I say, to play stenographers, instead of boycotting what was, in effect, an infomercial.

As one reader disparaged: “They were not bullied; they obeyed. Might as well not leave the office and just print the press release.”

The “boycott” is just one option. As one Star reporter emailed Wednesday, all the Star had to say was, “We are not going. We invite others to follow our example. But whatever decision they make, we have made our choice.”

Instead, Davenport offers: The Star has been so vigorous in its pursuit of Rob Ford that readers have complained that the paper is biased. To lead a boycott would have been to play into that belief.

Well, boss, that ship has sailed. As I challenged all media on Monday, grow some spine.

I was there outside the mayor’s office Monday. I saw the mayor’s henchmen call out the names of the chosen ones, fascist-like. I watched accredited media who work out of rented offices at city hall and cover our government day by day reduced to begging and pleading to be allowed in.

It was contemptible. Shaken, I tried to gain entry so I could shout, “No, I’m not going in unless Now magazine and The Mirror and The Canadian Press and all my colleagues are allowed in.”

As I watched the rejected reporters pitifully flail away, questions brushed aside by the imprimatur of the chief magistrate, I thought: “How dare you bring your goons into the people’s hall to keep representatives of the people at bay?”

It was instinctive, the anger rising inside me. It was not a product of bravery or practiced advocacy, just organic rage. Our bosses should see this, feel it, experience it. Then they might think twice before directing beat reporters to attend such events made odious by media managers.

A mayor has the right to give one-on-one interviews to whomever he wants. But he cannot be allowed, with us as accomplices, to hold a news conference and pick and choose the attendees. Period.

I mentioned three names in the column — to give readers a taste of what is was like to witness the roll call — not to malign those particular beat reporters. As a columnist, I have more privilege to stage a personal protest. The beat reporters should not have been put in that position. We — all of us in this industry who care about freedom of the press — could have done so much better.

Readers know how I feel about Dale. He sits two desks over from me. When Rob Ford lied and said Dale peered over his backyard fence, I wrote that I believe Daniel Dale. He has no guile.

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Over the two years during which the Star faced snide remarks from other journalists, when Talk Radio laid the groundwork for callers to state that the Star was making up stories about the mayor, this columnist vouched for the integrity of Robyn Doolittle, Kevin Donovan and Daniel Dale. I never flinched in the furor those columns stirred.

So, now, not to put lipstick on the pig, I am offended that at a time when we should be resolute and united in our opposition to the beginnings of tyranny, we are distracted by corporate hegemony.

(Insert Star view here).

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