OTTAWA – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council has been so swamped with complaints over a Sun News Network interview from earlier this month that it’s asked viewers to hold their fire.
The CBSC, which upholds the standards set by Canada’s private radio and TV broadcasters, took the unprecedented step of posting an apology on its website for being unable to respond individually to every complaint about this matter (as it usually does), noting that the “volume of complaints already sent to us exceeds the Council’s resources”.
The number of complaints over this one show are already more than double the number the CBSC gets in a year.
“May we also request that those of you who have not yet filed a complaint refrain from doing so?”, the posting continues. “It will not help the disposition of this file in any way since the CBSC never bases its decisions on the number of complaints it has received. Decisions are always and only based on whether a broadcast has breached one of the CBSC’s codified standards.”
The interview between host Krista Erickson and Canadian dancer Margie Gillis, in which Erickson grills Gillis over the public funding that she has received throughout her career, aired June 1st on Canada Live. Click here to watch it.
The CBSC said that it will deal with the substance of the broadcast via its usual process and a decision will be released publicly "in due course", which normally takes about six months or so.
