a protest against the award by the University of New Brunswick of an honorary degree to New Brunswick Premier Shawn Graham. In response to the firing, respected professors from the University of New Brunswick, Mount Allison University and St. Thomas University announced a boycott of the newspaper. Further controversy arose over the Telegraph-Journals reporting of municipal affairs in Saint John. The newspaper ran a series of stories alleging mismanagement and inappropriate conduct by the City Manager and senior staff, based on what were later seen as fabrications, and faced allegations that it was using negative coverage to blackmail the City into making changes in administration and the tax rate. This led to a very public conflict between the Mayor and the newspaper. Shortly after, in the "Wafergate" affair, Telegraph-Journal editors altered a news story about the funeral of Lieutenant Governor Romeo LeBlanc to allege that the Prime Minister of Canada 'pocketed' a communion wafer while attending. The resulting controversy dominated national news coverage. Embarrassingly, the Telegraph-Journal was later forced to retract the allegation and apologize for fabricating the story after its own reporters threatened a lawsuit over editorial manipulation. The newspaper's credibility suffered further under critical national media attention. Editor Shawna Richer was dismissed and publisher Jamie Irving was suspended. A well-respected editor was brought in from outside the province to rehabilitate the publication, though Jamie Irving quietly returned to manage the Telegraph-Journal later in the year. Controversy continued in 2009 when a Telegraph-Journal writer plagiarized an entire story from the French-language paper, L’Acadie Nouvelle. The incident triggered another apology from the Telegraph-Journal. In 2015 the Telegraph-Journal once again came under scrutiny over its efforts to obtain, as part of a campaign for greater transparency into government lobbying and partisanship, lists of guests at the Government of New Brunswick's "Larry’s Gulch" luxury fishing lodge. An employee of Brunswick News, the newspaper's parent organization, had been a guest at the lodge and contrived to have his own name deleted from the lists prior to publication. Brunswick News had become aware of this ethical breach but didn't act until another news outlet, Canadaland, was about to break the story. The employee was forced out, and despite its earlier fervour for transparency the Telegraph-Journal quietly dropped further efforts to publish Larry's Gulch guest lists. Court proceedings in 2019 suggested that greater Irving family control over the newspaper's editorial direction was a factor in