Toronto Star spokesperson claims his paper doesn't suppress stories in wake of Paul Watson resignation

Toronto Star spokesperson Bob Hepburn has defended his newspaper after a Pulitzer Prize winner quit in protest.

“We don’t suppress stories,” Hepburn told the National Post. “We haven’t done that in the past and we’re not doing that now.”

Publisher John Cruickshank repeated that comment in a letter to Toronto Star employees.

However, photojournalist Paul Watson has claimed that the paper refused to run his controversial story about the search to find two ships lost during the Franklin Expedition.

He has also maintained that he was falsely accused of "ducking and dodging" questions from editors. Watson singled out editor Michael Cooke as being responsible for not running his article.

(Cooke is a former editor-in-chief of the Province newspaper in Vancouver. Cruickshank is a former editor-in-chief of the Vancouver Sun.)

Hepburn and Cruickshank also pointed out that the Toronto Star has published hard-hitting stories about former mayor Rob Ford and former broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi.

However last month in a defamation trial in B.C. Supreme Court, evidence indicated that the Toronto Star chose not to run freelance writer Laura Robinson's 2012 exposé about former Vanoc CEO John Furlong's tenure as a gym teacher in Burns Lake, B.C., in 1969 and 1970.

An email was presented in court, which was written by former Toronto Star national news editor Colin MacKenzie on July 25, 2012. It stated: "Squeamishness on high means we not gonna run."

The article appeared in the Georgia Straight in late September 2012. Furlong sued the Straight and Robinson, but later filed notices of discontinuance before the case reached examination for discovery.