Toronto Street News - Criticism and Controversy

Criticism and Controversy

The Southern Poverty Law Center has described the newspaper as "anti-Semitic" and "conspiracy-mongering".

The conservative National Post has sharply criticized the paper, which author Joseph Brean described as Toronto's "most prominent vehicle for hate propaganda, outrageous conspiracy theories, blatant plagiarism and libellous personal attacks, though virtually nothing about the homeless, all published at the whim of a man who lives a two-hour drive away in Ontario’s farm-belt."

Brean cited several articles published by the paper, including a claim Liberal party member Bob Rae had secretly changed his name from "Levine" (to conceal the fact that he is actually Jewish) and a claim that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper's real birthday is the same as Adolf Hitler, which the paper claimed “looks good on a resume” for “New World Order types.” Brean also claimed that even the paper's editor was forced to concede that

The paper has also been sharply criticized by Barbara Hall, of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and by Mel Sufrin, who serves as executive secretary of the Ontario Press Council (OPC), who has stated that the paper "fails almost every conceivable test for membership" in the OPC. The Canadian Jewish Congress is also critical of the paper, and in 2007 filed a human rights complaint after the paper published an article originally written by Hal Turner, which called for the murder of "jew bankers." Fletcher was later forced to concede that this article was "an illegal incitement to genocide against Jews."