It's strange that you're characterizing the OPC's invitation for the Fords to defend themselves as "a weapon against outsiders". Are you suggesting that Anti-Ford citizens (or OPC members) made the complaints anonymously, hoping that the OPC would try to get the Fords in to grill them? Because I really don't think that's the case.
What you're missing is that the Fords need to defend themselves in any way. The papers need to defend themselves here, not the Fords.
For them to issue a disingenuous invitation for the Fords themselves to make a complaint - that is the "weapon" I am referring to.
The OPC is acting upon the complaints made by those who included a name/contact with their complaint (they do not accept anonymous complaints), and those people are Ford supporters. The OPC is following its procedure for handling one of these complaints, which is to hold a hearing where the subject of the complaint is invited to articulate the inaccuracies in the article which led to the complaint.
From the Star's own article:
After receiving 41 public complaints, many of them anonymous, the Ontario Press Council announced Monday it will hold two hearings into stories published in May by the Star and the Globe and Mail.
In a letter dated last Friday, the council invited the mayor to lodge a complaint so that he can make submissions to the Star hearing.
The subject of the complaint would be inaccuracies of the newspapers. It would be up to either the complainant or the newspaper to prove anything one way or the other, otherwise these hearings are nothing more than a means of publicly twisting the arm of any 3rd party into showing up to defend themselves against complaints over which they have no control over.
We're talking now about the Fords, but if this is considered an OK for the OPC to operate, what sort of precedent is this setting? If a member of the media makes a complaint that an article about Adam Giambrone having romantic liasons in his office are incorrect, are they going to invite him in to the hearings to clarify what really happened? If a member of the public complains about an article in which the media reports the cost of the new fighter jets to be incorrect, are they going to invite the DoD to come in and prove what the numbers really are? If a member of the public complains that an article wrongly named someone as present at a crime or whatever, are they going to call the police to come prove that person A, B or C were really there?
Why on earth would they think this 3rd party is going to show up and respond to allegations of their wrongdoing?
Whether it is right of them to ask Rob and Doug to submit a complaint I suppose could be up for argument. Still, if someone complained about an article written about me I'd expect to be asked if I would want to complain as well. To hold the hearings based on a third party has to be an unusual case to begin with.
I can't see it as an attack on them, though.
I believe the hearings and invitation for them to file a complaint is both unusual - as you say - but they are using the 39 anonymous complaints as a sort of "reasoning" that they would extend this invitation in the first place, to put pressure on the Fords by saying "There have been 41 complaints here, so you really need to come clean here". What I am saying is that they have no legal standing to make this request to the Fords and by doing so, it's a really, really inappropriate use of their organization. Remember - it's members of the media that run the OPC, so
of course they are trying to get the Fords to allow their dirty laundry to be aired publicly.