OTTAWA – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released two decisions — one involving a segment of CTV investigative journalism program W5 and another involving The Vassy Kapelos Show on Bell Media radio station CFRA in Ottawa — which found in both cases the broadcaster “had not provided a full, fair and accurate presentation of facts, and had not corrected the errors,” contrary to the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics and the Radio Television Digital News Association of Canada’s (RTDNA) Code of Journalistic Ethics, according to a CBSC press release.
The W5 segment titled “Dog Fight,” which looked at pet custody disputes, aired on March 11, 2023. It included a lengthy interview with a woman who had initiated court proceedings against her ex-boyfriend to get custody of their dog. During the segment, it was said the dispute “began the day she broke up with her boyfriend and he took the dog with him,” according to the press release.
The CBSC received a complaint from the ex-boyfriend, who had seen the W5 program on CTV British Columbia. He complained W5 had misrepresented and omitted important facts of the case.
“The ex-boyfriend objected primarily to the statement that he had taken the dog. In his version of events, the woman had originally taken the dog when they broke up, had eventually signed a legal agreement granting the ex-boyfriend possession of the dog, but then had initiated legal proceedings to dispute the agreement’s validity,” the release reads.
“The complainant stated that he had made W5 aware of this, but W5 had neglected to obtain or broadcast his side of the story. The complainant was also concerned that the broadcast had violated his privacy because, although he was not identified by name, viewers could have deduced who he was because his ex-girlfriend’s name was provided.”
The CBSC’s English-language panel examined the complaint under the provisions of the CAB Code of Ethics and RTDNA Code of Journalistic Ethics regarding accuracy, fairness, balance, correction of errors, and privacy.
“The Panel concluded that certain statements made in the segment and CTV’s failure to acknowledge the nuances of the situation constituted an incomplete, unfair, biased and inaccurate presentation of the story, contrary to Clauses 5, 6 and 7 of the CAB Code of Ethics and Articles 1.0 and 2.0 of the RTDNA Code. CTV should have provided some clarification about the details, as per the requirement of Article 1.3 of the RTDNA Code,” the release says.
However, regarding the issue of privacy, the panel concluded CTV did not breach Article 5.5 of the RTDNA Code because the complainant was not identified by name.
The CBSC’s decision against The Vassy Kapelos Show involved an episode of the current events talk show that aired on CFRA on April 3, 2023, during which Kapelos and her guests discussed the indictment of former U.S. President Donald Trump on charges related to campaign finances. Guest commentator Tom Mulcair said Trump might face more serious charges at a later date, because “There were police officers killed on January 6th”, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot by Trump supporters at the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
“The CBSC received a complaint from a listener who stated that Mulcair’s statement was inaccurate because no police officers died on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol. CFRA explained that one police officer had died the following day and, although the medical examiner eventually ruled that his January 7 death was ‘natural’ due to two strokes, some people, including the Capitol police chief, attributed the officer’s death to what he had endured the day before when confronting the protesters,” the CBSC release explains.
The majority of CBSC’s English panel agreed it was inaccurate to say police officers had been killed on Jan. 6, and therefore CFRA had breached Clause 6 of the CAB Code of Ethics for inaccuracy. Two members of the panel dissented on this point, however, “finding that it was not possible to definitively conclude whether or not the events of January 6 contributed to the officer’s death, which allowed for some latitude in the interpretation of this fact,” the release says.
The panel unanimously concluded CFRA “ought to have clarified the imprecision regarding police officer deaths under the RTDNA Code’s requirement to correct errors,” the release adds. “The lack of clarification was especially problematic given that the host stated during the program that she was going to ‘fact check’ the information about Trump, but then made no mention of Mulcair’s debatable statement.”
Both CTV and CFRA are required to announce the CBSC’s findings on air on two separate occasions.
