OTTAWA – Harsh, potentially over-the-top criticism, is fair ball the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council said today.
The CBSC today released a decision on a complaint about Bruce Allen’s Reality Check, aired on Corus Entertainment’s CKNW (Vancouver) on September 8, 2005.
In the editorial segment (a daily piece where the host opines on a news story), Allen criticized a government program designed to assist drug addicts too wasted to inject themselves.
In the September 8 segment, Allen complained about a government program which supports volunteers assisting drug addicts on Vancouver’s East Side to inject themselves. He criticized this use of taxpayers’ money and said “What’s the down side if these people [drug addicts] don’t get their fix? They die? Yeah, so? Are we losing big contributors here? […] Kind of like driving around a car at a hundred kilometres an hour when the sign says fifty. You take your chances, you reap the consequences.”
A listener complained to the CBSC that this editorial “promoted hatred towards a disadvantaged group in our society, people with substance abuse problems.” CKNW argued that Allen was simply stating his objection to the government program and the B.C. Panel agreed. Illegal drug addicts are not a protected group.
"The focus of the piece is on those who facilitate the drug addiction by helping those too ‘messed up’ to inject themselves," says the release. "The Panel finds the opinion piece tough but entirely fair. Were the addicts and their guardian angels a fair target? Yes. Were they a proper target? Yes. Was the criticism over the top? Perhaps, but only on the level of taste. It may be that Bruce Allen used a medieval mace when stepping on the bug would have sufficed; however, the criticism of the program of benevolence did not constitute a breach of Clause 6 of the CAB Code of Ethics."
