CBC "National" Report on the Start of the Defense

On the CBC's nightly news show The National, correspondent Neil Macdonald relayed highlights of the defense's opening, and also supplied some perspective. Joan Maida testified that it was her idea to pack the boxes up, and that Conrad Black had given her no direction to do so. She also testified that she showed him where the boxes were when he arrived, and that she and he had never discussed them since. Mr. Macdonald noted that Mr. Black’s former journalist employees are quite loyal to him still, including later defense witness Kenneth Whyte. Maclean’s has even (in Mr. Macdonald’s estimation, unprecedentedly) allowed Barbara Black to write about her husband's trial in her column.