OTTAWA – Even if you don’t like a firefighters’ strike or their alleged tactics, you’re not allowed to tell them “F**k you” on the air, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said today.
During an early afternoon interview with the assistant general director of the Montreal Fire Safety Department, CHMP 98.5 host Gilles Proulx repeatedly used the English epithet “F**k you”, a comment that he directed at the firefighters of Montreal.
The CBSC concluded that the use of the f-word during a daytime broadcast at the Corus Entertainment news/talk station and the insulting comment directed at a group were in violation of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics.
At the time of the interview, Montreal’s firefighters were engaged in a labour dispute with the City, notes the CBSC release. As an act of protest, the firefighters had allegedly sabotaged some fire stations so that their superiors would be prevented from entering the buildings, to which Proulx objected.
The CBSC received a complaint from a firefighter who was offended by the comments and the CBSC’s Quebec regional panel concluded that Proulx was fully entitled to express his opposition to the firefighters’ position in the labour dispute, but that he had gone too far by aiming his coarse language insults at the firefighters personally.
The CBSC also concluded that the use of the f-word during daytime hours violated the Code. The Panel expressed its findings in the following terms.
“The issue is not whether the host was right or wrong. He had an opinion on the way union members operate in the labour-management conflict, in which conflict, as he observes, the public regularly pay the price. The Panel supports his right to express those views, but they do not consider it a right without limitation,” said the panel’s decision.
