Evidentia

Mr. Black, Mr. Black, just one question, Mr. Black...

I found the experience of covering Conrad Black’s 2007 criminal trial in Chicago interesting, not least because it gave me the chance to meet so many other journalists, from Canada, the United States and Great Britain, and to compare their methods and perspectives.

When giving interviews on CBS, CNN, PBS, BBC World or Radio-Canada (in French), and comparing the questions I was asked in interviews on CBC and CTV (English-Canadian channels), I quickly realized that the Conrad Black story was considered a colourful but relatively minor story everywhere in the world, except for Toronto, where Mr. Black was and still is considered a Toronto celebrity.

As time went by, journalists at the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, as well as big London newspapers – The Independent, the Daily Mail, the Guardian and The Times – asked me to explain the positions of various Canadian media on Conrad Black. They considered me, as a Montrealer, to be not only culturally different from the Torontonians, but also independent. This got me thinking.

For one thing, the Chicago and London journalists were anything but naive. They had covered many criminal trials, and witnessed the downfall of many business tycoons, not to mention foreign dictators. They had a keen eye for a good story, new factual details, personality insights and colour, but they remained cynical about the proceedings.

David Radler and Conrad Black built the company together and knew each other intimately: but their fates have proven completely different

According to these Chicago and London journalists, by the time Mr. Black, a CEO of a large US corporation, pleaded the Fifth Amendment (the right not to incriminate himself), then arrived in criminal court, and faced a jury, his goose was cooked. They formed an opinion of the scale of shenanigans at Hollinger International by looking at David Radler, Mr. Black’s long-time business associate and right-hand man at Hollinger International, and their private holding company Ravelston. Mr. Radler had cut a deal with the Justice Department, pleaded guilty to one count of fraud, and paid the SEC and the Chicago Sun-Times $72 million (although according to another version, he actually handed back $93 million). He also said this was the beginning of his atonement, which reminded me of a passage from the Bible.

Although Mr. Radler said he would write a book about everything that happened, he has basically disappeared from sight since his December 2008  release from prison, after just ten months behind bars, and is back running newspapers again. Mr. Radler is a pragmatist.

A mug shot of Conrad Black

Mr. Black, meanwhile, is an idealist of sorts, certainly a self-involved man intent on clearing his name. (The US Supreme Court recently referred his case back to the Appeals Court in Chicago: I would give Mr. Black one chance in 20 of actually being acquitted on this last-ditch appeal, but 5% is still a chance.)

Mr. Black has done two years and four months of his term, at Coleman Low Security Prison in Florida. He will remain in the slammer until October 2013, unless his appeal miraculously succeeds.

During his own criminal trial, he actually accused his prosecutors of being Nazis. He slammed the government’s case in an interview with the Guardian, claiming it was “bullshit .. a joke … an outrage … a complete fraud…. I’m sending everyone a message. I’m saying, This is war.”

This kind of outburst could hardly help Mr. Black’s case. How could someone who knew the ins and outs of the media (as a former newspaper proprietor) and the law (with a Law degree from Laval University and a seat as a life baron and legislator in the British House of Lords), fail so spectacularly? How could someone who continually portrayed himself as a master strategist, defeat himself like this? Even though I wrote a book about him, I am still unable to answer these questions.

Mr. Black has actually placed many strategic messages in Toronto media, counting on long-time friends, his own lawyers, his own writings in the National Post, and Toronto journalists eager to find new angles (albeit speculative ones) to keep the story alive.

It is only natural that some Toronto journalists, such as Mr. Black’s wife Barbara Amiel and his long-time friends Mark Steyn and Brian Stewart, should defend him.

A second group of veteran reporters, Peter Worthington and Allan Fotheringham for example, probably knew too much about the Blacks to be able to write a dispassionate account. I would put the business historian par excellence and Black biographer Peter C. Newman in a completely different category. I remember him asking me during the trial, whether both of us hadn’t been bamboozled by Mr. Black into believing he was a genius.

Then there was Steve Skurka, a perpetually tanned and dapper criminal lawyer from Toronto who was blogging daily and writing a book about Mr. Black. He also serves as legal analyst for CTV. I was surprised to learn that he had defended the notorious motorcycle gang the Hells Angels, in a number of high-profile trials. I am not sure whether working for the Hells should qualify someone to be a TV commentator!

There was another kind of Toronto journalist writing about the trial, a self-important hack really, who poured out streams of invective and gross exaggerations with no factual basis at all. Enough said!

Then there were the more serious news reporters, working for the National Post, the Globe and Mail and other publications. Once their editors decided Conrad Black was still a Toronto celebrity, whom readers somehow loved to hate, these reporters had to craft stories highlighting the most commonly identified news values of print journalism.

These news values are: impact, timeliness, prominence, proximity, bizarreness, conflict and  currency. Consider for a moment that “reality” is not on this list!

Chicago and London journalists told me they were astonished by the attitude of many Toronto reporters covering the trial

At the same time, these Toronto reporters were caught in the dilemma of having to write celebrity journalism about Mr. Black, which meant maintaining access to him through the trial (which required a flattering attitude), sometimes writing about how he and Barbara Amiel felt and looked rather than what was really happening, and picking up any crumb Mr. Black dropped for them, as long as it corresponded to the news values I just mentioned. Which meant they were in a relationship of dependence, not of independence.

I would call the end result “narrative distortion.” These journalists crafted stories with broad brush strokes, using evidence which they chose for its narrative impact; they kept the story interesting by personalizing the details and polarizing the different possible outcomes of the trial; they kept refreshing the story (making it relevant again) by playing up certain speculative aspects (this could happen, this might not happen, what if this happened, this should be happening, this should not be happening).

An unnamed inmate at Coleman Low Security Prison, with Conrad Black

This is why the Radler story is finished, whereas the Black story lives on… in Toronto.

I should mention that it was easy for me to cover the trial, since I was writing a book, not a daily newspaper story on deadline, and I could simply wait for the verdict, then describe what happened. When I wearily maintained in my TV appearances during the trial that we are all innocent until proven guilty, TV interviewers sometimes accused me of defending Mr. Black; when I commented with cool detachment on the guilty verdict at the end of the trial, then I was supposedly abandoning him! Even so, I maintained my distance from Mr. Black during the trial, showing courtesy as I met him in the corridor, but nothing more. We had a last drink at the Ritz a few days before the verdict came down, and I told him how serious the charges were, mentioned how much I regretted everything that had happened, and said I admired the way his children had supported him through the trial.

The moral to the story, for me, is not that Mr. Black is a celebrity hard done by, who really deserves better. It is rather that as the CEO of a large US publicly-traded corporation, he was responsible for doing everything possible to run the company successfully, respecting the letter of the law and maintaining positive relations with employees and shareholders. If the CEO of such a large company ends up before a jury in a criminal trial, it is too late for him to do much about anything.

Somehow, one obvious fact is conspicuously absent from the usual coverage of the Black saga in the Toronto press: that Mr. Black bears fundamental responsibility for much of what happened at Hollinger International. But that is on the moral plane.

Justice is blind. We will have to wait and see how things go in the Appeals Court.

Justice is blind