OTTAWA – Some more Quebec City radio hosts have landed in hot water over coarse language. The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council today released its decision on a complaint against the hosts of the afternoon show on CJMF-FM, Le Trio de l’enfer.
During a broadcast on Dec. 17, 2004, the hosts were discussing the state of radio in Quebec City. They referred to competitors André Arthur and Jeff Fillion, the controversial CHOI-FM hosts whose crude comments eventually caused the CRTC to rescind the station’s licence, as “trous de cul,” or “assholes.” A listener complained to the CBSC.
The CBSC said that just because Arthur and Fillion used coarse language doesn’t mean that others can as well. “It goes without saying that the fact that those hosts used insulting, nasty, crude and offensive comments about other persons in no way justifies any broadcaster in airing such language about them,” the council decision reads. The council “finds the epithet personally directed, nasty and insulting.”
The CBSC’s Quebec Regional Panel had previously decided that Arthur and Fillion had themselves used offensive language on-air in dealing with competitors.
The CJMF-FM hosts had used the f-word, which was in breach of the CAB Code of Ethics, the council said. “The language was unduly coarse and offensive and was used at a time of day (the after-school period) when children could be expected to be listening to the radio.”
The discussion in particular was between commentators Louis Lacroix and Alain Laforest on the show that is hosted by Robert Ross, Christian Riverin, and Josée Guimond.
The CSBC is the industry’s self-regulatory body to uphold broadcast standards.
