OTTAWA – Abusive and “anti-female views” comments made by American author Dick Masterson on the morning show of CFBT-FM did not violate any broadcast codes because the hosts immediately disputed the comments, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has determined.
A listener complained that the Kid Carson Show on The Beat 94.5 Vancouver provided Masterson “with a platform for his misogynistic views”, and that that the content was discriminatory against women. Masterson, the author of a book and website entitled Men Are Better than Women, appeared on the show on March 2, 2009, where he made “outrageous” statements such as that "women should not be allowed in the paid workforce", and that “men simply do everything better”.
The show hosts and each of the callers challenged Masterson on every one of his points, questioned why he had such negative views of women, and asked what his own mother thought of his work. Host Carson also suggested that Masterson could not be serious and was only trying to be provocative in order to sell books. In addition, The Beat pointed out that the hosts did not share Masterson’s views and that he would not appear again on the program.
The CBSC’s B.C. Regional Panel examined the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code, which contain provisions relating to abusive and unduly discriminatory comment based on sex, degradation and sex-role stereotyping. The majority of the Panel concluded that the segment did not violate any of the code provisions because the hosts and callers had consistently and immediately refuted all of Masterson’s anti-female views.
The Panel made the following observations:
“[T]he unsavoury Masterson comments were effectively blunted, indeed destroyed. By reason of the reaction of the three hosts, supplemented by the callers, nothing remained but buffoonery. […] [Masterson] was continually mocked by the women co-hosts, and Carson suggested that much of the controversial opinion was simply exaggerated to sell books. […] The unduly discriminatory, unduly negative stereotypical and abusive comments were debated on a level playing field, and the unacceptable comments were left tattered on that field of debate. Not a sentence, not a phrase, not a word was left credibly afoot. However problematic the opening and periodic Masterson assertions, there is in the result the contextual survival of the program itself. The Panel finds no ultimate breach of the codified standards.”
One Panel Adjudicator, however, disagreed, stating that the station should simply not have given Masterson a platform for his negative opinions and that “by allowing Masterson on the program, the broadcaster has in effect polluted the program by his abusiveness directed at women.”
