ABOVE: Mayor Rob Ford will have to fend off allegations he libelled a Toronto Star reporter after comments made in the media this week. Jackson Proskow reports.
TORONTO – Mayor Rob Ford has yet to respond to a libel notice demanding he apologize for comments made about Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale in a recently televised interview.
But his brother councillor Doug Ford suggested the pending lawsuit was merely an attempt at self-promotion by the Star.
Dale said he was doing none of those things and said a police investigation backs him up. Ford said he has yet to speak to his brother since he was served but is confident the mayor does not owe Dale an apology.
In Depth: Mayor Rob Ford
The councillor also questioned the motives of Dale’s colleagues in the city hall press gallery, claiming “they all sided with the Star.”
“You’re all supposed to be objective, unbiased, you’ve all publicly come out taking Daniel Dale’s side, so being objective has gone out the window with a lot of the media folks,” he said.
WATCH: Daniel Dale interviewed on the News at Noon.
The mayor first made the remarks during an interview with Conrad Black that aired Monday on ZoomerMedia.
“He’s taking photos of little kids,” Ford said during the interview with Black. “I don’t want to say that word, but you start thinking ‘What’s this guy all about?’”
A court processor served the libel notice to the mayor at his office on Thursday afternoon. Dale said he chose to sue reluctantly, and had planned not to.
“I planned to say in my announcement that I would reconsider my decision if the mayor were to repeat his lies in the future. I woke up this morning to learn that he is already repeating them,” Dale wrote on TheStar.com.
Dale claims he decided to file the libel notice after comments the mayor made on a Washington radio show earlier Thursday.
“I ran around the creek and I caught this guy up on cinder blocks taking pictures in my backyard. And I just absolutely lost it,” Ford said on the Washington radio show. “Don’t come sneaking around the back and start taking pictures in the backyard when I have young kids.”
WATCH: Doug Ford criticizes the city hall press gallery.
Dale will continue to report on city hall with “the full support of the Star,” according to his column. The newspaper is also covering his legal costs but remains adamant the choice to initiate legal proceedings was Dale’s alone.
“When people say reporters shouldn’t be the story, I’m the first to agree,” Dale said during an interview on the News at Noon. “I didn’t make myself the story. The mayor basically suggested that I was a pedophile and I have to defend my name.”
ZoomerMedia released a statement Friday asking whether Dale is also planning to sue a Washington sports radio station on which Ford repeated some of his remarks. Dale’s libel notice asks Zoomer to apologize “immediately ‘publicly, abjectly, unreservedly and completely.’”
ZoomerMedia said in a statement Friday, “as there is now the threat of legal action, ZoomerMedia will not be making a statement until such time as we can consult with our attorneys to consider the allegations and determine next steps.”
Conrad Black, who claimed it isn’t his job to fact-check his interview subjects, told the Canadian Press Dale’s on thin ice with the action.
“If the Star goes to court with this turkey, they’ll be killed,” Black said in an email. “They raised the pedophilia question; Ford didn’t.”
Black declined to discuss the matter further or elaborate on previous comments that Dale might have a case because it was now a legal action.
An IndieGoGo campaign has been set up to raise money for the mayor’s legal defence should the lawsuit go to court.
“It’s time for Torontonians to stand up and say enough is enough. We now have to stand against these special interest bullies and show them that this harassment has to stop,” the campaign statement reads. “The Mayor should be left alone to continue fulfilling his mandate of making the City a more efficient, better place to live for its citizens.”
This is the second recent crowdsourcing campaign revolving around Ford. In May, Gawker set up the “Crackstarter” fund that raised $201,199 to buy a video of the mayor smoking what might be crack cocaine. They failed to obtain the video and donated the money to 4 Toronto-area non-profits.
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