Why CTV? They pursued a very important story, they interviewed the accusers and at least one person one of them confided in years ago, they immediately made corrections when they were identified. It sounds like there was also a lot of related stories about his time on Parliament hill that the general public was not aware of and has come out after this story,
Name one. As far as I know we're still at two accusations.
All that has come out is that it's general knowledge in Barrie that Brown liked to go to bars and try to meet women.
I am sure there were members of the media that heard those stories years ago but didn't report them until we got to this level of detail. What did CTV do wrong? How should the media handle stories, not report anything, or only report what you want to hear?
Yes there need to be journalistic standards met. What make you think that CTV didn't meet them. A story of this prominence would have many senior CTV officials and legal team vetting it, or so I would expect. This is not like the standard bullcrap that rags like the Rebel put out and you never seem to have problems with them.
Brown's lawsuit against CTV will probably focus on
-failure to disclose a connection between the reporter and the constituency office staff member Brown allegedly tried to kiss. CTV claims that it looked at this and found no connection between the reporter and witness. That's been contradicted by Kate Malloy, their editor at Hill Times, who said that the two certainly did work together and know each other. There's clearly a strong potential for bias that the reader would usually be made aware of. We normally see disclosures like "Bell Media is a parent company of CTV News" when relationships exist that might suggest a potential for bias. Why not in this story?
-failure to do adequate research. Failing to verify that Brown lived where the first accuser said he lived, or talk to the bartender who allegedly served the girl all this alcohol before she went home with Brown, or talk to other people who were at the house party where the staffer claims he tried to kiss her, for example. They talked to the first girl's bestie but didn't find anybody who might provide a more objective recollection of events. That they only interviewed witnesses that would support their story seems highly selective. One wonders if that might be because of bias (see prior point) or perhaps CTV was looking for a blockbuster story.
-if I recall correctly they didn't give Brown much opportunity to respond before going to press with the story. They didn't give names or dates and only gave him a short time to respond. If they had confronted him with the allegations and given him a chance to say "look, I didn't even live in a 2 story house at the time" CTV wouldn't have ended up wearing so much egg on their face when the accuser had to change her story.
I am not a lawyer, obviously, but those are 3 areas where I think CTV
**** up this story badly. And those are the areas I would concentrate on if I were Brown's lawyers. I think there's a legitimate case to be made that CTV didn't do their due diligence, and therefore that CTV participated in defaming Brown and causing him substantial professional and personal harm.
-k