‘Everything is fine’ at city hall
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford address the media regarding the resignation of two more people from his staff at city hall in Toronto on Thursday, May 30, 2013. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Rob Ford isn’t going anywhere. He made that much clear during a press conference Thursday afternoon after two more of his staff members quit: Brian Johnston, a policy adviser, and Kia Nejatian, his executive assistant. It was a defiant Ford who stood before reporters Thursday, telling them he was ready to run in the 2014 election and that “everything was fine” even as the mayor’s office had lost five staff members in less than a week.
While Ford isn’t going anywhere, the Ford headlines aren’t going anywhere either. Here’s a roundup of what media outlets are saying about the Toronto Mayor.
The Toronto Star has new information about the murder of Anthony Smith, the young man pictured with Ford in a photo given to reporters by the same men who showed them a video of someone who appears to be Ford smoking from a glass pipe. While there have been suggestions that Smith — who was shot outside a Toronto night club — was murdered over the alleged video, Star reporters Jayme Poisson and Robyn Doolittle quote a man who says this isn’t the case. Instead, the shooting was over a feud between rival members of the neighbourhood, says the Star. Another source tells the Star that Smith wasn’t a drug dealer, as has been suggested.
Someone close to the mayor continues to leak information to the National Post in attempt to contradict information being leaked to the Toronto Star. A day after the Post ran a story where a source said the resignation of former press secretary George Christopoulos and deputy press secretary Isaac Ransom was “no big loss,” the paper has another quote from a source who says former Ford chief of staff Mark Towhey, who was fired last week, has “an axe to grind” and that he wants to “kill the mayor, politically and otherwise” by leaking information to the Toronto Star.
Also at the National Post, reporter Megan O’Toole goes inside the apartment building unit where the alleged video may have been kept and/or filmed. Inside apartment unit 1703, a man tells O’Toole that he has seen the video and believes it to be real. “We don’t like Rob Ford getting screwed,” the man says. “We wanted to help him… 85 per cent of [young Somalis] are very upset about these guys with the video.”
The chorus of voices calling for the mayor to step down, which he doesn’t plan to do, is growing louder:
International media is also paying attention:
And Gawker, the media outlet that published the first story about Ford and the alleged crack cocaine video, is still paying attention. In a post about Ford’s Thursday press conference, writer Max Read takes note of Ford’s refusal to answer any questions about the alleged video or crack cocaine use. Instead, notes Read, Ford answers questions he doesn’t like with “anything else?” Read has an unsubstantiated explanation: “Grandiose claims and repetitive behavior are common side effects of cocaine use,” he writes.