The media reports on the Conrad Black trial, webbed overnight and today, are shifting the spoltlight away from David Radler to new witness Jonathan Rosenberg, in preparation for next week's appearance of Paul Healy:
1. From CTV News, a report by Romina Maurino, which begins with a quote from Conrad Black about Mr. Radler's entire testimony. The quote ends with: "'I don't think any jury in the world would convict anybody on the basis of what he said. I repeat my long-standing view that this was never a criminal case -- except possibly against him.''' The report includes details about the testimony of Csr. Rosenberg, who testified yesterday that both Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee "told the special committee that CanWest wasn't interested in the Hollinger executives getting the non-compete payments as a condition of closing. And both men knew the non-competes were not taxable under Canadian law." He also testified on the point contended by the defense team: according to Mr. Rosenberg, Mr. Atkinson "said 'that in his view, certain of the information (given to shareholders at the meeting) was incorrectly presented.''' The rest of the report contains excerpts from the final cross-examination of Mr. Radler by Ron Safer.
2. Peter Worthington's latest column, webbed by the Toronto Sun, reports on some questions asked under recross-examination by Eddie Greenspan and Gus Newman, counsels for Conrad Black and Jack Boultbee respectively. Csr. Greenspan got Mr. Radler to stipulate that the latter's "mere" 9500 shares of Hollinger International, the reason claimed for Mr. Radler's not taking an interest in the price of the stock when the sale to CanWest was announced, was bolstered by a 14% (approximately) interest in Ravelston, which amounts to owning 3.2 million shares of Hollinger Int'l. Csr. Newman reminded Mr. Radler that he was in breach of a supposedly "silly" non-compete agreement, and that he acquired two newspaper chains on the cheap, for Horizon Publications, after being thrown out of the publisher's job at the Sun-Times. (Mr. Worthington does not mention how Mr. Radler reacted to the breach question.)
3. As reported in an article webbed by the London Free Press, Conrad Black is mentioned as the exception to the rule that businesspeople are normally ethical and above reproach, in a speech by a fellow who would be considered by many to be somewhat of an oddity: Thomas Caldwell, chair of Caldwell Financial Ltd., and also a committed Christian. He made that remark as part of a speech he gave to the annual London Christian Prayer Breakfast, about his "journey to becoming a Christian."
(If you're cynical, I suspect that your radar was twitted by the above item, but Mr. Caldwell does have a track record of good works and no scandals to his name.)
4. CBC News: Morning aired a clip from an interview with Conrad Black, which is also excerpted in this report. The clip was aired at 8:07 AM.
5. From the Chicago Tribune, a report by Ameet Sachdev which focuses on the testimony by Csr. Rosenberg so far.
6. A CP summary, webbed by CBC News, mentions that there will be no testimony until Monday.
7. An article by Paul Waldie, webbed by the Globe and Mail, is a re-cap of David Radler's entire testimony, with an assessment of how effective a witness he was for the prosecution. Two experts quoted therein, both regular trial-observers, agreed that Mr. Radler was a disappointment for the prosecution, but a third offered the information that jurors tend to not hold a plea bargain agreement against the testifying bargainer; they assume that the remorse expressed is sincere.
8. Rick Westhead of the Toronto Star also re-caps Mr. Radler's testimony - from yesterday.
9. A report by Mary Vallis, webbed by the Edmonton Journal, notes near its end that "[t]he jury seemed unaware of the distinction" that was "haggled over" yesterday over what Csr. Rosenberg was allowed to testify about what he heard at the Hollinger Int'l annual meeting in 2002. It continues: "While the jury paid close attention the final hours of Radler's testimony, some jurors appeared to lose interest in the afternoon when Rosenberg took the stand. One appeared to doze off as the lawyer answered questions." (It also reports that the last part of Conrad Black's statement to the media yesterday, before being cut off by Csr. Greenspan, was "Radler, the former lieutenant in his newspaper empire, did not have 'any credibility.'")
10. The latest report from the Chicago Sun-Times' Mary Wisniewski also focuses on Mr. Radler's last day on the stand; it ends with a brief recounting of Csr. Rosenberg's initial testimony.
11. The Daily Mail has details on three questions asked by Eric Sussman to Mr. Radler on redirect: the first asked if Hollinger Int'l had received any benefit from the individual non-compete agreements; the second asked if Mr. Black had questioned the $2.6 million payment he had received from American Publishing, a Hollinger Int'l subsidiary; the third asked if non-compete agreements with the defendants (and Mr. Radler himself) had been asked for by the buyers of the newspaper. Mr. Radler's answers, stripping away particulars, were: no; no and no. (The re-cross that Mr. Worthington reported on, mentioned above, addressed the third question, at least.)
12. The Welland Tribune has webbed a column by Allan Fotheringham, which starts off by making the common-sensical observation that an odd, if erudite, vocabulary doesn't make the user of it very popular; nor does a trial filled with analogously arcane terms make for an attentive jury of ordinary people. He then complains about the courtroom rules that journalists have to observe while there, and then makes the more serious complaint that the Canadian coverage of the trial has been so lopsided as to be a "disgrace."
(When you think about it, the pro-Black skew is a man-bites-dog story all in itself. I can't recall any comparable skew in Canada's generally left-lib-oriented journalism circuit, to the favor of a known and at times notorious Tory 'plutocrat' and sharp-tongued pundit, in my own lifetime. I can't explain why; the normal pattern would be near-open castigation of Conrad Black from the Black-averse and quiet objectivity from Black sympathizers. The only stated reason I remember reading is a mutated America-skepticism, expressed in hostility at the American justice system meat-grinding a famous Canadian, which Mark Steyn wrote about some time ago. [He first broached it in this entry.] Even if that is the primal reason, it would still mark a major shift in the cultural wind. It wouldn't explain why the American reporters on the trial beat increasingly seem to be treating Mr. Steyn, Peter Worthington and Christie Blatchford as if they were the vanguard, not a triumvirate of apologists. The only rationale that makes sense to me is the prosecutors are hanging themselves in some way to the press - perhaps by presenting the non-compete agreements and payments to individuals as inherently crooked, illegal, and strange. Many of the reports I've read have gone out of their way to note that such non-competes are a normal part of the North American newspaper industry. Telling a group of people that what they've seen doesn't exist is a sure way to brown them off.)
13. Mark Steyn has taken notice of #12 above.
14. A WQAD.com-webbed Associated Press summary of Mr. Radler's impact ends with a quote from a well-known Black watcher: "Historian and journalist Tom Bower calls Radler 'a critical witness but a contaminated witness.'"
15. A longer re-cap by Mike Robinson of AP, webbed by the Houston Chronicle, also has the same quote, along with a presentation of how Mr. Radler tried to distance himself from Mr. Black while on the stand. "He told of working in tiny newsrooms in the land of sled dogs and Mounties hundreds of miles from any large city, squeezing out profits," while Mr. Black sought influence and status.
16. A summing-up from Romina Maurino, webbed by CBC News, discusses the same subject. It starts off with: "Despite Conrad Black's bold prediction that he won't be convicted of fraud on David Radler's testimony, legal observers say the prosecution's star witness still delivered some damning evidence against his former business partner," followed by this conclusion: "it's still too early to call the trial in Black's favour." It notes that the "star witness" provided little or no testimony to implicate the other three defendants - only Conrad Black suffered some damage from his testimony, particularly about who orchestrated the alleged scheme.
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In his latest post on the Toronto Life Conrad Black trial blog, Douglas Bell notes that the 2004 Delaware Chancery Court decision against Conrad Black, as controlling shareholder of Hollinger Int'l, may serve as a precedent for Rupert Murdoch taking over Dow Jones over the objections of the Bancroft family.
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