Canadian Press offended by "Sheeple"

It would seem that the first legal action Mr. Turner is facing over his book is coming from the Canadian Press.

Glen McGregor of the Ottawa Citizen writes:

OTTAWA — Even before it hits bookstore shelves on Friday, former MP Garth Turner's tell-all about getting bounced from the Conservative party caucus has already stirred the threat of legal action.

But the first to take formal offence to Sheeple: Caucus Confidential in Stephen Harper's Ottawa is not one of the Tories who sat with him on the government benches, but a news agency that covered the outspoken MP.

Turner's publisher, Key Porter Books, received a letter last week from the Canadian Press objecting to a passage in Sheeple about the wire service's reporting of a Conservative caucus meeting.

Key Porter said Thursday it has reached an agreement with CP to settle the complaint. The publisher said it has sent out "notification stickers" to booksellers to be placed inside the front cover of the book. The books are not to be sold until the correction stickers are affixed, the company said.

Turner was suspended from Harper's caucus in 2006 for alleged violations of caucus confidentiality on his Internet blog.

In a section of the book that discusses other breaches of confidentiality, Turner refers to a caucus meeting in which the prime minister was reported to have received a standing ovation for his decision to keep flags on Parliament Hill flying at full mast when Canadian soldiers are killed in Afghanistan.

The Canadian Press story on the meeting, Turner writes, was "a crock. There was no ovation, standing or otherwise." The story was made up by the Prime Minister's Office and leaked, Turner claims.

Turner goes on to allege that CP's Ottawa bureau chief confirmed the next day that "information of this kind is never verified, never confirmed, because of the inherent difficulty in doing so."

Jennifer Fox, a publicist for Key Porter, said that the passage in the book was not meant to be critical of CP's reporting.

"Garth didn't have any intention to suggest Canadian Press did not check its stories," she said. Rather, the anecdote was meant to illustrate the lack of caucus secrecy.

Fox said the book would be released Friday, as scheduled.

CP editor-in-chief Scott White said he was unable to comment Thursday but would be able to speak about the matter Friday.

Turner told Canwest News Service he didn't think most people would notice the offending section.

"Unless you were absolutely engaged in the arcaneness of it, I don't think you'd really see it," he said. "But in any case, they had an issue and we've come to a resolution."

Review copies of Sheeple were circulated to the media over the past week.

Once a cabinet minister in Kim Campbell's short-lived government, Turner returned to Parliament as the MP for the southern Ontario riding of Halton in 2006.

After he was kicked out of caucus and the Conservative party, Turner sat as an Independent, then joined the Liberal caucus in 2007. He ran as a Liberal in last year's federal election, losing to Conservative Lisa Raitt, now the minister of natural resources.

This is hilarious. "Sheeple" has only been available in book stores a few days and he is already being forced to apply "noticfication stickers" to his books.

If Garth has gotten the facts wrong on this, how can we trust that the rest of the book is factually correct?