Sun Burned

Scandal bites back

Almost every week an editor or reporter somewhere seems to add yet another episode to a permanent serial titled " The Press Eats Its Own Words. " The latest chapter:

The front-page story in the Toronto Sun last month was a grabber. Reporters Donald Ramsay, 28, and Bob Reguly, 50, a prizewinning veteran, charged that John Munro, Canadian Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, had illegally benefited from inside information about the government's purchase of the giant oil company Petrofina. The account detailed Munro's alleged transactions, listing numbers of shares, dates and prices. Munro heatedly denied the charges and filed a $630,000 libel suit against the Sun; Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau labeled the allegations "garbage." Last week, after an internal investigation, the Sun admitted that the article was totally false. "The reporters who uncovered this story assured their editors of factual, documented backup for it," said the Sun in an editorial. "We were wrong." Said Editor in Chief Peter Worthington: "It was some horror when we found we had nothing." Ramsay was fired. Reguly, who came on the story late and never checked Ramsay's "proof," resigned. "I trusted a rat. You can fault me for being stupid."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.