Canada’s Sun Media Apologizes to George Soros After Lawsuit Threat

Canada’s largest newspaper chain has published a “retraction and apology” to billionaire philanthropist George Soros. Asreported in Mediaite last Thursday, Canada’s CTV News reported that  Soros was suing Sun Media for defamation. On Saturday, The Toronto Sun published a “Retraction and apology to George Soros,” pertaining to a column written by columnist Ezra Levant and published in the tabloid on September 5.

The retraction appears to be a pre-emptive effort to mitigate future damages from the lawsuit. It reads in part:

On September 5, 2010, a column by Ezra Levant contained false statements about George Soros and his conduct as a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary.

Upon receiving a letter of complaint from Mr. Soros’s legal counsel on September 13, 2010, Sun Media Corporation always intended to publish a retraction and apology for this column. Despite constant efforts on both sides, Sun Media and Mr. Soros’s counsel were unable to reach agreement on the content of a retraction.

Nevertheless, Sun Media, the Toronto Sun, and Ezra Levant “retract the statements made in the column and unreservedly apologize to Mr. Soros for the distress and harm this column may have caused to him.”

Levant’s original column is no longer available either on the Sun website or on Levant’s own site, but a cached version can be found on LiveLeak. (We won’t be reprinting the libelous statements.)

It has been a tough week for Sun Media and its corporate parent, Quebecor. On Sept. 16, Kory Teneycke Vice President, Development at Quebecor, who was heading up a project to launch a right-wing cable news channel called SunTV News, was forced to resign over allegations that he fraudulently interfered with an online petition hosted by Avaaz.org, and amidst rumors that the company was being sued by Soros as well as novelist Margaret Atwood.