OTTAWA – Two broadcasters have been found by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council to have violated their standards, the CBSC announced today.
The first decision involves two reports on Global Ontario’s Global News, looking at safety issues on the Scarborough Bluffs. The program was covering the aftermath of the emergency rescue of three teenagers from a crumbling cliffside. The reports focused on a particular condominium development that was “just metres away” from the cliffs. It suggested that an eroding parking lots and lack of fencing were dangerous.
The report showed an attempt to interview a member of the condominium board. That same woman filed a complaint with the CBSC, saying it inaccurately identified the location of the property and its owners, and left the viewers with the impression that the property owners failed to maintain it.
The CSBC’s Ontario panel examined the reports against the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ Code of Ethics and the Radio-Television News Directors Association of Canada Code of (Journalistic) Ethics. It found the news broadcasts contained inaccurate information as well as sensationalized and distorted content but that they did not violate anyone’s privacy or endanger anyone’s life.
The second case involved a radio station in Alma, Quebec (CKYK-FM), whose morning show hosts announced that a convicted pedophile lived in the community and that their house was decorated for Hallowe’en. The hosts gave the house’s address (though not the person’s name), after apparently verifying the information. They said that the person had a right to decorate his home but they felt that parents should know which house it was. The hosts repeated the address the next morning.
The people who lived in the house complained that the radio station had violated their privacy and that they were being harassed as a result of the announcement. The station argued that the information about the conviction was publicly available in court documents and that it was an important announcement about Hallowe’en safety.
The CSBC Quebec panel found that the broadcasts did violate the residents’ privacy. “There were three persons living at that address, at least two of whom would apparently not fall within the category of the station’s designated target yet they were also made to suffer the consequences of the disclosure,” the panel’s decision read.
“While it must be acknowledged that criminal records may well be matters of public record and reasonably easily verified, this does not automatically render them appropriate for broadcast,” the panel said. “The broadcaster has assumed that the public interest was being served by the disclosure of such information on a day when children could be expected to be roaming the streets in search of candy and other treats. The Panel disagrees. The broadcast of such information can only be justified when a convicted and released offender can reasonably be considered to represent a genuine and verifiable threat to the lives and safety of the community.”
“The Panel considers it unreasonable to assume that every criminal (which would include every sex offender) poses a danger once his or her societal re-integration is underway,” the decision went on to say. “Moreover, there is no indication that the provision of the civic address was necessary in order to achieve the Broadcaster’s desired result. Generalized advice to parents to accompany their children from door to door on Halloween would have quite sufficed.”
