OTTAWA – A caller’s “hostile” comments on a Maritime radio show did not promote violence, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has ruled.
A listener complained that a comment made on the ‘Maritime Morning ‘broadcast on CHNI-FM (News 88.9, Saint John, New Brunswick) on April 4, 2008 was “a direct threat” to the show’s guest, and should not have been broadcast.
The radio station responded that the remark was “just an example of the heated debates that sometimes occur in talk radio”, and that it did not believe that the caller had truly intended to promote violence.
Paul Watson, the head of the marine conservation lobbying group Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, appeared on the open-line radio program less than a week after four Magdalen Island sealers drowned when their disabled boat capsized while being towed to port by the Canadian Coast Guard.
The Sea Shepherd Society is well-known for its anti-sealing views and militant conservation tactics, and according to reports, Watson had said that the slaughter of thousands of seal pups each year was more of a tragedy than the deaths of the four men. Apparently protesting those remarks, a group of fishermen had cut the mooring lines of a Sea Shepherd Society boat.
‘Maritime Morning’ radio host Andrew Krystal challenged Watson on some of his views, suggesting that Watson had gone too far with his recent comments. The majority of the callers to the program expressed their support for Watson’s conservation work, but one caller stated “I think you should be put on the ice floe with the seals […] and hopefully someone will come along with a hakapik and put it in your skull.”
The Atlantic Regional Panel of the CBSC examined the listener’s complaint under Clause 9(a) of the CAB Code of Ethics which prohibits radio content that promotes or sanctions violence.
“It acknowledges that [the caller] was angry with Paul Watson’s prioritizing the lives of seals in the relative weighing of human and mammalian life. It considers, though, that caller Joe was merely advocating that Paul Watson be accorded the life of the seals he valued so much, as in, if you like the seals to that extent, go live with them and suffer their fate, including the worst that may befall them. […] The Panel does not, however, conclude that the broadcast in any way advocated or sought such an eventuality. The Panel does not consider that the comment was inciting, sanctioning or glamorizing violence. It was admittedly harsh, and the Panel does consider that the host had a duty to keep the guest and callers in line, particularly when such intellectual confrontation can be anticipated. A disavowing comment by host Krystal would have been appropriate, but the absence of one did not, in the Panel’s view, amount to a breach of Clause 9(a),” the decision read.
