OTTAWA – The broadcast of the content of an anonymous flyer – which turned out to be inaccurate – in the middle of an election campaign should not have been allowed, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said today.
The decision concerned Fairchild Television and Talentvision’s broadcasts of a news report on July 27, 2006 about the campaign for the federal Liberal Party nomination in the Vancouver Kingsway riding two days later. The complaint focused principally on the alleged inaccuracy, unfairness and lack of balance in the report resulting from the on-screen broadcast of the text of an anonymous flyer which made allegations against one of the candidates.
The CBSC National Specialty Services Panel concluded that the report violated various clauses of the RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics and the CAB Code of Ethics.
The Specialty Services Panel noted that the broadcaster had not been able to find anyone prepared to admit authorship of the flyer or to stand behind it, says the decision. While the Panel acknowledged that each candidate “would wish no negative comment (in an ideal world) but certainly no unfair negative comment,” it added that The Panel does not question Fairchild and Talentvision’s right to report on the placing of such a flyer; it merely notes that there may have been indications that they ought to have been especially cautious considering they were according some on-air credibility to an anonymous document.
The Panel decision was based not on the spoken word, but only on the on-screen written word since the incorrect allegations were aired as the anonymous flyer text, even though displayed for only four seconds.
“When there is, for example, an image that broadcasters should not, or do not wish to, air, they do not show it fleetingly, they pixillate it (i.e. digitally scramble the image) for every instant of its on-screen presence, just as they bleep inappropriate language. If the content should not be seen, that is how broadcasters are expected to deal with it. And it is how they should do so. They cannot be unequivocal in their treatment of inappropriate content; they must not broadcast it,” reads the decision.
“This is the moreso necessary in the broadcast world of the 21st century. Programming is easily time-shifted, paused during broadcast, played and replayed at the instant, or recorded and saved for later consumption, when it can again be re-viewed, played back and paused. […] It is the view of the National Specialty Services Panel that the brevity of the view of inappropriate material will not save a broadcaster from a Code breach.”
