[Makarov]

Originally Posted by sketchyt

Fair point. It's not really a rule, but if it were it was probably the same guy in taped-up glasses who decided journalists must spell out the numbers 1 through 9 in accordance with CP Style.

It's more of a believability-to-severity of accusation issue. I don't think anyone mislead anybody. Three eyewitness accounts are way more than enough for say, a house fire (i.e. "Boy, that fire was big," said neighbour Sergei Makarov standing over the ruins of Alex Burrows' house while Calgary Flames fans stand behind giving him a standing ovation.). There's a burnt down house, someone saw it, the fire dept verified it. Yeah, it happened.

For the Ford story, it's still pretty weak for The Star (and in another really annoying and one-of-those-things distinctions in journalism, I don't link Gawker in the hard-journalism side of things so I think they can say whatever they want to say).

Two eyewitness accounts on a video watched on a tiny cell phone screen. I can't remember but they watched it once or twice? Weak. There's no burnt down house. We're getting closer with his team quitting/fired. He's not in rehab. There's still no video. There's still nothing that has surfaced.

I love a good story in journalism. And a great story (bad news or good news) would be the mayor of freaking Toronto doing crack-cocaine. That's a pretty out-there accusation and claim. So the more out-there you are, the stronger your proof should be. It's not a rule, much like there's no rule stopping The Star from printing a story that says, "Alexander Burrows stops diving and biting hockey players. Video evidence exists and is in the possession of Ryan Kesler. Our reporters saw the video. We swear. Click here to read more."

All I'm saying and what I think others are saying is that the truth and the (low) level of reporting are two different things here.

Fair points. However, I will respond with several quotes from the initial Toronto Star story:

Two Toronto Star reporters have viewed the video three times.

Although it is not clear what type of screen they watched it on, it seems to me that their account of the video is too detailed for it to have been a mobile phone screen:

The Star had no way to verify the authenticity of the video, which appears to clearly show Ford in a well-lit room...
...
Throughout the video Ford’s eyes are half-closed. He lolls back in his chair, sometimes waving his arms around erratically. He raises a lighter in his hand at several points and moves it in a circle motion beneath the glass bowl of the pipe, then inhales deeply.
The Star reporters (Donovan and Doolittle) were shown the video on the evening of Friday, May 3, in the back of a car parked in an apartment complex at Dixon Rd. near Kipling Ave. in the north end of Etobicoke. The reporters were allowed to watch and listen to the video three times. After, both reporters separately made written notes of what they saw and heard. Both reporters, prior to watching the video, studied numerous city-hall-related videos of Ford and, to the best of the reporter’s abilities, they separately concluded the man in the video was Ford.
In the video, what appears to be afternoon sunlight is streaming through partially closed window blinds, lighting Ford’s face. The video ends with the ringing of a cellphone (it is not clear if it is the cellphone that is being used to video the scene). The ring tone, which is a song, startles the mayor, whose slitted eyes open a bit, and he is heard to say, “That phone better not be on.”