As the seamy accusations and allegations mount around News Corporation it seems less and less likely that Rupert Murdoch is ever going to find a pony under this particular pile of shit. There’s plenty of evidence that his brand of British tabloid “journalism” was and is, in fact, an organized criminal enterprise. It’s enough to make even an investment banker blanch.

One weird local footnote turns on a public appearance last February by Toronto Star editor Michael Cooke wherein the Brit held court for an assemblage of hacks at Massey College. For the most part the evening was a triumphant procession for Cooke as he ridiculed the Globe for its lifestyle nonsense, puffed up the Star and held forth on the media generally.

The only bump in the road was a question from media satirist and all around TV bad boy Ken Finkleman who asked Cooke point blank about one of his more loquacious sidebars. “You just called Rupert Murdoch a ‘hero of journalism’ in more or less the same sentence as you referred to Canadian troops in Afghanistan as ‘heroes.’ I’m just wondering how you define the word hero?”

There was no mistaking the smirk on Finkleman’s face and to call the subsequent barbed back and forth between the two uncomfortable would be to beggar understatement. Cooke immediately accused Finkleman of masking a left-wing bias in the form of his pejorative query while Finkleman kept prodding “why don’t you just answer the question.” It all made for grand theatre and on the night most left with the sense that Finkleman—a rank outsider—had committed an appalling impertinence questioning the great man’s journalistic ethics. In light of the latest news, Finkleman might well demand a recount.

Full disclosure: I worked for two years 2002-2004 as a writer-actor on Finkleman’s show The Newsroom.