OTTAWA – A radio hosts’ conversation about murders violated broadcast codes because it contained gratuitous violence and made light of a violent act, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) said Thursday.
The CBSC examined a segment of the Dean Blundell Show which is the morning show on CFNY-FM (102.1 The Edge, Toronto). On September 15, 2011, the hosts talked about two murders in Mexico that had allegedly occurred after the victims posted negative comments on social media websites about Mexican drug gangs. The two victims had been found disemboweled and hanging from a bridge. The hosts provided gory details about the state of the bodies and then joked about how the Facebook “status” of the victims would be “disemboweled” or “dripping blood from the bridge”. They also made other jokes about the situation.
A listener complained that the segment was “entirely repugnant and disgusting”. The station acknowledged that the “discussion was graphic and unpleasant”, but stated that the hosts were trying to “bring levity” to the subject.
The CBSC’s Ontario Regional Panel examined the complaint under Clause 9(a) of the CAB Code of Ethics which prohibits gratuitous violence in any form on radio, and Clause 6 which requires the proper presentation of all opinion and comment. The Panel found violations of both clauses because the “gruesome details provided about the state of the bodies was entirely unnecessary to the discussion, particularly given the flippant tone with which those descriptions were provided”.
The Panel also stated that “the constant laughter on the part of the hosts and the multiple jokes about the murder victims demonstrated extreme insensitivity and went beyond mere poor taste” in this discussion about a real incident relating to a serious problem in Mexico.
