City
Who would do this, and why?
Who would do this, and why? An anonymous individual makes a seemingly outlandish claim, warns the public to act, and pleas for help... but leaves no means of contacting them to follow up on any of this. Awkward. Or fishy.
A disgruntled (ex-)employee exacting revenge? An immoral competitor tossing a new low in low blows? A personal vendetta gone public? The unfortunate and seemingly malicious result of someone's mental imbalance? Is this residual fallout in fears over listeria?
This sign has been spotted in the Annex, near Bloor & Bathurst, on hydro poles, newspaper boxes, and mailboxes. And it promptly ended up the blogTO Flickr pool today and in short order was all the Twitter as well... leaving everyone wondering what this was all about.
A phone call I made to the popular Middle-Eastern restaurant at 5:30pm yesterday was answered by an employee and I was passed on to the senior employee present. Upon being notified about the postering (which we can only assume is untrue, and if so, libelous), he sounded surprised and mildly upset by the news. He assured me that no one had died in the restaurant.
This morning, I spoke to the owner, Sam, who expressed shock and disbelief. "We've been a part of this community for 17 years. I have no idea why this is happening," he explained. "I'm shocked. We love the Annex, and through the years have had nothing but rave reviews and happy regulars," he continued. "I can't imagine who would do this."
Dinesafe shows the restaurant had some problems but was granted a conditional pass on February 19th. Problems were quickly addressed and they were given a full green pass on February 20th.
If I see any of these seemingly libelous posters in my travels in the Annex, or anywhere else in the city, rest assured - I'll be yanking them off.
UPDATE: Sunday, March 15th:
Last night I stopped by the restaurant and Tweeted along with a fuzzy cell phone snap: "Half way through a shawarma at Laila's and my date is still alive":
UPDATE: Sunday, March 15th:
I just got an email from Torontoist editor David Topping, who told me that one of their writers has been working on this story for almost a week. Please see a far more comprehensive look at this issue in Kaori Furue's article on Torontoist.
Photo of poster in the Annex by blainekendall.com. Fuzzy photo of half-eaten shawarma by me.
Discussion
65 Comments
Sort By Oldest First / Newest First
Subscribe
I think your last line ("If I see any of these seemingly libelous posters...I'll being [sic] yanking them off") negatively affects your credibility.
I beg to differ. I feel that leaving the posters up would be compromising my credibility and integrity as a member of the community. The posters are anonymous, state lies, and are cowardly.
The info on that DineSafe report makes the place seem disgusting! Why go to a place that was given a conditional pass, when there are many nice places in the city? I wouldn't risk going there knowing their history.
What? I mentioned AND linked to the restaurant's specific Dinesafe infractions in the article.
Jerrold -- As a journalist, I want you to give me all the facts. With all due respect, there are times where I'd love to hear about your personal connection to the community, but in a case like this, I just want the facts.
I'd like to have seen a call for the folks who postered to back up their claim, or even have had the question posed to your readers "Would you tear down the sign?". Perhaps even information aside from dinesafe, where folks who have issues with restaurants can turn to, so folks don't turn to random, anonymous postering.
While tearing down the signs might breech impartiality, and some of us have issues with that -- let's also look at the notion of elevating the posterer's agenda by publicizing their handful of signs. Just as much as we're going to question Jerrold, let's talk about whether a couple signs on hydro poles warrant our attention at all. This post may be giving more credibility to the posters than they deserve.
as for the restaurant being disgusting based on the dinesafe report. I dunno.
first, it was given a conditional pass. So it couldn't have been THAT nasty. And secondly, there didn't seem to be anything in there that you probably wouldn't find in any local restaurant or grocery store. It almost reads like they didn't have toilet paper, and someone hadn't flushed the toilet during the inspection.
So let's try and find a way to both protect the public, and to also protect small business.
How do you even know what this person is claiming to be true? What if it is? I bet you'd feel REALLY guilty if you tore down the poster and then someone else got REALLY sick or worse, died from eating at this place?
Having looked at their (Laila's) inspection history, they've received 2 conditional passes twice in the past 2 years, the most recent of those conditional passes being issued on February 19th 2009.
Am I defending this person's actions? No. If it's untrue, it's libel. Plain and simple. If it is true, then why didn't we hear anything about it? Surely it would have been in the news, and this place would have been shut down.
But Jerrold, I am questioning your integrity as a journalist by saying you will rip down the posters. Your excellent article was effectively ruined by your last statement. Please don't rip down the posters and pass judgement.
It was just a case he had health problems, and they just so happened to come to their climax when he was there. Nothing to do with the food, it was just his time.
Aren. I think that's an awesome point. Maybe rather than tearing them down, write something on the posters asking for proof, and make it just as legible as the claim so that passer-by would be reminded that there's no evidence being presented. If the sign writers actually have something, they should be sharing it, rather than making baseless accusations.
If what the poster claims is true, the owner of the restaurant would know about it. Police would have been involved. The person who posted the poster wouldn't be hiding under the veil of anonymity or talking about "giving them your money".
What I've said here in this blog piece still leaves things for the reader to decide. It doesn't mean that I can't be honest about what I feel has gone on here, and it doesn't mean that I can't state clearly I've decided to do in response.
If I see these, I'll pull them down. My prerogative. If you read this piece and feel differently, just walk on by them when you see them. Your prerogative.
This blog did all that it could in my opinion by investigating the surrounding factors as best as it could. But think...if you start tearing "these kinds" of warnings down then it wouldn't have given rise to this awareness in the first place, only a person whose eaten there before can attest to whether their food is sickening.
a) fallen for some of the most absurd propaganda that exists and b) fail to note were this factual it would have to be made up by the most horrible friend ever. Imagine you're dead and all your pal can muster up is a home office printout slamming a restaurant. Nice tribute.
It's fake and is the paper equivalent of trolling; readjust your sleuthing caps and snap a nice one of whomever puts these up.
And since postering like that isn't legal, yanking them off isn't illegal..so how does that compromise journalistic integrity in any way?
I wouldn't give too much credit to anybody just because they post something on the Internet, the people commenting above me certainly included.
If a restaurant killed/was responsible for the death of a family member/friend then you bet your arse I will be suing them. I would call the health department and so forth. This is just a coward, or an ex-employee.
Again, if you find out who it is, send it over. I am so interviewing this coward for my podcast.
help.
If this were a 'serious' case, they would have SOME sort of contact info / ANYTHING credible ; P
It was probably a person who didn't like their f.sandwich, was drunk, and had credit at Kinkos...
Long Live Laila!
jonathan@blogTO
What's more interesting to me than the posters is people's reaction to them. People are putting the screws to Jerrold for saying he'll take them down, suggesting that it's a sacrifice of his journalistic integrity. But that's not what gets me. What DOES get me is why tear them down at all? Unless you're personally aligned with the posterer or the restaurant I don't see how anyone would have enough of an investment in the situation to care about who is saying what about whom. Even if the claims of the poster are bold-facedly untrue, where did it become your duty to regulate what other people say about neighbourhood restaurants?
Anyway, that's all I have to say on the matter for now.
ALTERNATIVE THEORY: The posterer's friend died... metaphorically?
I've always thought Bathurst and Bloor was <i>the</i> place to go if you wanted to experience something new food wise, and according to Laila's website, they've won the Best Falafel category every year since 1995 , so they must be doing something right,(though I haven't been able to find any <i>NOW Best of TO</i> archives to verify).
I'm sticking with the "this is not a joke" rule; ie, it's exactly the opposite when those words are used.
But I was intrigued by the article, and really curious about what was going on -- the person telling the story seemed to decide it was done, and made their judgement, and now I'm left with a less than satisfying ending.
If faceless anonymous posterer has their claims taken at face value and elevated here, and the restaurant owners have their rebuttal taken at face value, i suppose justice has been done. but I'm not entirely sure we know anything more about what's really going on.
http://www.nowtoronto.com/news/story.cfm?content=168421
If someone did die in the restaurant, it would have made the news/blogs rather than only being heard about on the telephone poles.
If the death was related to something the restaurant did/didn't do, the restaurant would have been closed, not simply given a conditional pass.
Thank you, Jerrold, for reminding us that it takes all sorts of people to make a city as fascinating as ours.
I see 70 year old crazy ladies doing the same thing, ripping posters off of telephone polls. Step back from the abyss.
You SERIOUS? Of course some of us are going to get riled up. What if you owned a business and then all of the sudden someone - for the sake of sh*ts and giggles puts up posters like this - you likely COULD be ruined because of these posters. It's insane! It's up to our social media networks like BlogTo to tell us about these things that may not make the bigger papers.
It worries me tremendously, and I hope that the business doesn't suffer.
"I see 70 year old crazy ladies doing the same thing, ripping posters off of telephone polls. " So why don't you go tell your wife to stop doing that.
But the story is somewhat incomplete. You can't expect the restaurant owner to admit if something bad happened. If someone died there, 911 would have been called and there would be police and EMS involvement and therefore evidence and people to contact. Someone very well could have died for reasons completely unrelated to food-handling or health and safety in the kitchen. Choking, or a severe allergic reaction, for example, something DineSafe wouldn't record. No restaurateur would want to be associated with a food-related death, no matter how incidental.
The person who put them up is an idiot.
It's an idiotfest. Yayyy.
Sounds like credible journalism to me. Now all you have to do is investigate the other suspicious flyers around town, like if we can really learn to think in Spanish or get my essays wrote properly.
Leave the guy alone man...Its a blog!
I have seen less relevant stuff on CP24 then this!
BlogTO is a relatively influential site. It's cited by the mainstream media often and it appears on Google News.
That being said, Jerrold did not compromise the story by adding in that last line. His comments didn't change the facts presented. What they did do was change the article from a news piece to an opinion piece.
I'll admit that I was taken aback by that line. The story read as a very good piece of journalism until then. I don't think Jerrold did anything wrong by including the last line, but he is doing his own hard work a disservice.
Some research was clearly involved in the article. Jerrold called the restaurant owner and researched their past DineSafe history. That was solid journalist work. Adding that last line in disrespected the hard work Jerrold put in.
Now it reads as an opinion piece. It's still a very good, informative one, but it deserves to be more. Without that last line it's a pretty credible journalist piece.
One day, in the future-times, someone will come up with a journalistic integrity rating system for content. Some blogs try to be credible, others don't, some dabble, it's all a mess right now. Jerrold can be as scrupulous or careless as he wishes. One day we'll look back on our current wild west internet and marvel at its chaos.
I had no idea so many of you have the expectation that I reserve my own personal opinion to preserve my "journalistic integrity".
Should I apologize for being a blogger that likes to do a little digging before revealing my opinion? Should I really not make my opinion be heard, so that readers can "form their own opinions"? blogTO would not be much of a blog if we were to all hold back our opinions now, would it?
"I love Laila's. What a stupid crappy thing to do. Good on you for taking down the posters." ~ <a href="http://twitter.com/toddtyrtle/statuses/1329337023";>toddtyrtle</a>
"nice! was thinking of going there myself tonight." ~ <a href="http://twitter.com/tukutela/statuses/1329363513";>tukutela</a>
"did you see any of those "notices" about Laila? how's the shawarma? I am going tomorrow" ~ <a href="http://twitter.com/miroslavglavic/statuses/1329360759";>miroslavglavic</a>
Obviously a lot of people enjoy your writing and feel that this was a very good post. I haven't read anywhere on here that people are asking you to apologize for anything. No one, at least not me personally, is asking you to "reserve your own personal opinion."
I don't get why you seem to be personally insulted by this. Much like you are able to voice your opinion in the piece, the readers of this blog are able to do the same. That's why there is a comments section.
"One line of opinion in this here blog entry has elicited as much response in the comments as the very issue revealed in the post"
We (the readers commenting on this post) could say the exact same thing about you.
"Some reader comments in the comments section of this blog entry has elicited as much response from the writer of the post as the very issue revealed in the post."
You're right. This is a blog. Opinions will be expressed here. If you didn't want readers commenting on your posts, blogTO should not have a comments section.
There will be no issue where everyone will agree. Ever. We are stating our opinions like you are stating yours. That's the nature of your medium.
But your reaction, indignation that anyone would dare speak out against your writing style, reeks of self-importance and egoism.
Also, "Kaori spent almost a week working on this piece, which I think is great. I spent an hour or two."
You explained here why you got a lot of criticism about this post.
"We all do what we can with the resources we have."
Why did you bother if you couldn't do the story justice like Kaori?
On one side, we have the "this is a blog" camp. Yes, this is a blog. However, having stories linked to and even featured verbatim in national publications makes this a bit more than just a blog. It's now seen, at least in part, as a reputable news source. This puts a twist on the Average Joe's viewpoint of BlogTo when they see Op-Ed pieces such as this one.
The solution: a little logo next to the poster's name that says something along the lines of "Editorial." That would of course cover a helluva lot of the site's posts, so perhaps more fitting titles such as 'Feature' for Morning Brew, or 'Investigation' for posts such as this would clear up some of the confusion.
Regardless of the fact that this is an approach to take people by the hand who may not fully grasp the concept of a Blog, a standardized grouping like this could work:
While labels such as City, Food, and Announcements focus mainly on the general topic of an article, a label further identifying the motivation of the writer may force people to abandon preconceived notions of what the site should represent overall, and put the focus back on the subject matter at hand.
Disclaimer: this is only my opinion.
and i've never understood why comments on this site are so spiteful.
also, read the torontoist post...
You are a journalist, so if you see someone attacking a child with a knife, your job is to report the facts from a neutral perspective, not to interfere. Don't stop the murder and certainly don't call the police, as these actions might discredit your impartiality. Just sit back, watch carefully, and maybe take some photos. That's how you can best serve your community as a journalist.
Severe food allergies can be life threatening. There needs to be more awareness about them.