OTTAWA – A half-hour episode of Freedom Radio Network (FRN) on CHRB-AM (High River, AB) that focused on an individual violated the CAB Code of Ethics, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said today.
The person targeted had brought a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission about the web site comments of an FRN co-host and another group about persons on account of their sexual orientation. He also complained to the CBSC about the broadcast, alleging that the program had been used to retaliate against him, in violation of clauses of the CAB Code of Ethics dealing with Human Rights; full, fair, and proper presentation of opinion and comment; and failing to treat fairly controversial public issues, says the CBSC release.
"The Prairie Regional Panel did not consider that any comments made amounted to a violation of the Human Rights Clause of the CAB Code of Ethics," reads the press release.
"There is, simply stated, nothing in the comments of Chapman and Chandler that comes at all close to unjustified nastiness, vitriol and callous treatment of individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. There were clearly efforts by the co-hosts in the currently challenged episode to stay on the permissible side of the discriminatory line," reads the release.
"If anything, the comments directed at the success of the activism and militancy of the homosexual community belied a reluctant but grudging admiration for their success. When they referred to the complainant as articulate and manipulative, they were clearly not trying to flatter him, but there was an admission in those adjectival recognitions that he was achieving certain goals that the co-hosts and those they represented would rather not have encountered."
On the other hand, in dealing with the clauses on full, fair and proper presentation, and the fair treatment of controversial public issues, the Panel found several problems with the broadcast on the Golden West-owned station. Since almost all of the half hour was consumed with a one-sided attack on the complainant, a private, not a public, individual, "the Panel noted the disparity of power between the person(s) on the transmitting side of the microphone and those on the receiving end of the radio waves. There is, therefore, a need for those whose transmissions are to all extent untrammeled to exercise their licensed authority with a particular appreciation of the responsibility that that privilege bestows upon them. In the view of the Panel, the co-hosts exceeded reasonable bounds in this episode," says the release.
"The Panel found that the co-hosts had ‘distorted the nature of the acts of the complainant in a serious way.’ They had: a) alleged that the complainant had accused them of a hate crime; b) misled listeners about what they had ‘won’ and ‘where’ in litigious confrontations with the complainant; c) made a series of incorrect, distorted or exaggerated comments regarding homosexuality which constituted unfair and improper presentation of opinion; and d) by threatening to ignore any judicial condemnations and fines, made unfair comments on a controversial public issue, which were ‘an example of electronic bullying.’"
