hey, remember Toronto's Crack Mayor, Rob Ford? It was a similar open secret that he was a cocaine fiend for *years* before the news ever came out. You can't just report "yeah everybody knows he does coke." You need someone willing to go on record: he does coke, I've seen him do coke, etc.

April 11, 2026 - 03:51 UTC

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And his currently-premier-of-Ontario brother is in basically the same situation with being an (alleged) ex-dealer.
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(Incidentally, despite both that and his premiership being defined by obvious handouts for his land developer buddies, he's on term #3)
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There are similar open secrets right now. Reporters aren't going to talk in public about which political leader is pretty blatantly cheating on their partner with another member of their party, because you need either a source on record or photographic/video evidence. But it's happening!
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Why not report based solely on an unsourced rumour? Because then you're vulnerable for libel - and rightly so, too, because unsourced rumours are not reliable anything and if they were the standard for journalism it would be a nightmare.
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Was something bad going to happen to this woman who shared her information before the story broke?
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What’s wild to me was that this wasn’t even the scandal I was waiting on to drop.

That man’s skeletons have skeletons in their closets.
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The Star explicitly noted at one point that this is why their story only hit print after Gawker's: they weren't willing to pay for the video, so they had no evidence.

But once someone else reported on it, they could report "other people are reporting... and also we saw it too."
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