OTTAWA – A talk show guest with some pretty paranoid viewpoints has landed Victoria AM station C-FAX in trouble with the CRTC.
A listener complained to the Commission last fall over a segment of the Terry Moore show in September 2004 where guest Craig Winn was allowed to speak his mind on Muslims and terrorism. The CRTC issued a decision on the matter on Thursday.
“They are fundamentalists following Muhammad’s example. When we are willing to deceive ourselves and call them terrorists or call them insurgents instead of what they are, which is good Muslims, we have no chance to protect ourselves from them,” says the Commission’s decision today, repeating the segment from the show.
“Everything we know about Muhammad … presents Islam’s lone prophet as a terrorist, as a thief, as a slave trader, as a pedophile, a man who engaged in incest, multiple acts of rape, mass murder, assassinations of all journalists. He is Islam’s foundation. No Muhammad, no Allah; no Muhammad, no Koran; no Muhammad, no Islam. The foundation of Islam is based upon a perverted pirate and terrorist. That may not sound pretty but unfortunately that’s the truth, and to deny it will only get us killed,” continues the decision.
At one point during the interview, the guest stated that Muslims: “… do not have the capacity to understand what they’re doing, nobody who has a rational coherent mind would follow the advice of a rapist and terrorist and mass murderer. … So you have to start by them being irrational, they have been indoctrinated since birth and have either lost their ability to think or have found thinking to be dangerous in Islamic countries.”
The Commission found the comments to be abusive and therefore in violation of the Broadcasting Act.
It criticized host Moore for not adequately challenging his guest’s views, saying “the Commission is of the view that the host neither openly criticized nor adequately challenged the guest’s opinions… at no time did he directly oppose the guest’s remarks. On the contrary, he helped to facilitate the guest’s responses by inviting the guest to openly expound his views and to expand on some of his observations.
The CRTC recognized that talk radio shows can be volatile or unpredictable, but told the station it must develop guidelines for open-line programming and to submit those guidelines to the Commission within three months of the date of this decision for its approval. If approved, the guidelines will become part of C-FAX’s license, which is up for renewal in August 2006..
(At the time of the program, September 27, 2004, CHUM Ltd. had just assumed control of C-FAX after purchasing it from Seacoast Communications. The station, however, is not a member of the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council which usually adjudicates these matters.)
– Greg O’Brien
