OTTAWA – A TQS news item about an Ontario pedophile didn’t contain any material that exploited kids, but should have been preceded by a viewer advisor, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said Wednesday.
The report, entitled [translation] “Girl Assaulted Live”, was broadcast on November 2, 2006 during the 6 p.m. newscast. It explained that an undercover police officer was doing cyber-surveillance and encountered the live webcast of the assault, which occurred in St. Thomas, Ont. The officer determined the man’s location and contacted the police there who then arrested the man. The report included an interview with the officer, as well as blurred web site images of young women with bare breasts and in underwear.
A viewer complained that the images were unnecessary and promoted child pornography. The Quebec Regional Panel examined the complaint under the Exploitation clause of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Sex-Role Portrayal Code which requires that programming “refrain from the exploitation of women, men and children,” and prohibits the sexualization of children. The Panel acknowledged the revolting nature of the report’s subject matter, but concluded “the broadcaster chose discreet, non-exploitative images which were entirely relevant, indeed useful to the awful story it was called upon to report. It does not find that the images were either explicit or sensationalist, as the complainant has contended. Moreover, the Panel does not consider that the reporting of such matters, to begin with, in any way perpetuates the recurrence of the criminal activity,” says the decision.
The Panel did say that TQS should have aired some form of warning prior to the report, as required by Article 6 of the CAB Violence Code.
