OTTAWA – After consulting 36 organizations and other professionals, from Women In Film and Television to the Black Business and Professional Association and the Canadian Association of Independent Living Centres, the Canadian Association of Broadcasters submitted its new Equitable Portrayal Code to the CRTC last week.
The code’s intent is that broadcasters shall encourage equitable portrayal of all people on television. "This Code is intended to assist in overcoming unduly negative portrayal and stereotyping in broadcast programming based on matters of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status or physical or mental disability," says the preamble.
It is meant to replace the old Sex-Role Portrayal Code. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council will administer the new one, as it has the former.
"The rationale for this approach is that most of the proscriptive provisions in the SRP Code are as applicable to the portrayal concerns identified in the Task Force Report and the CAB Persons with Disabilities Report, as they once were to gender alone," says the CAB.
Moreover, the CAB believes this is the best approach for the following reasons:
* The SRP Code contains a number of provisions dealing with stereotyping and negative and inaccurate portrayal that can readily be expanded to include all identifiable groups;
* The SRP Code is over 15 years old and contains a number of provisions that are either in need of revision or are no longer relevant;
* Over the past 15 years, the CBSC has only referred to Articles 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the SRP Code. Moreover, Articles 1, 3 and 5 have never been the principal standards applied in the decisions in which they were cited. They were never determinative, only supplementary in their relevance. Furthermore, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has advised the CAB that the other provisions in the SRP Code have been of little utility in the Council’s decisions; and
* Revising only one of its Industry Codes to address the concerns identified in the research findings is the most practical and time efficient approach to ensuring early implementation and industry use.
