Ottawa, December 16, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released its decision concerning an episode of the Jerry Springer Show broadcast by CFMT-TV (Toronto) which dealt with a man’s fetish of vomiting on his partner during intercourse. A complainant wrote that he found “this particular segment to be disgusting, repulsive, degrading and dehumanizing”.
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Code of Ethics and the Sex-Role Portrayal Code of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB). The Council did not find that the show breached broadcast standards, noting that, “in the conflict between bad taste and free speech, the Council always comes down on the side of speech.” It added that “however bizarre the guest’s behaviour may have been,” it was not in breach of any broadcaster Code. In reaching this conclusion, it relied upon a statement in an earlier joint decision on other episodes of the Jerry Springer Show by the Atlantic and Quebec Regional Councils:
This is not to say that the Councils approve of the content of the shows or consider them appropriate for young people but only that, in general, the subject matter dealt with does not fall afoul of any of the private broadcaster Codes. Indeed, to the extent that the Councils are troubled by the subject matter, it results primarily from their concern that the broadcasting of such aberrant behaviour as generally characterizes the show has the effect of desensitizing the viewers (of any age) to the disregard of normative social behaviour. While this may be a regrettable result, it does not constitute a breach of any Code.
The Council further made note of CFMT’s public announcement of its decision to discontinue the broadcasting of the Jerry Springer Show. It stated that
the broadcaster has ... provided the ultimate solution to the complainant in question. As the Council has often said in the past, such action on the part of a broadcaster is not an admission of any breach of a Code but, among other things, an example of responsiveness to its audience’s concerns.
Canada’s private broadcasters have themselves created industry standards in the form of Codes on ethics, gender portrayal and television violence by which they expect the members of their profession will abide. In 1990, they also created the CBSC, which is the self-regulatory body with the responsibility of administering those professional broadcast Codes, as well as the Code dealing with journalistic practices first created by the Radio Television News Directors Association of Canada (RTNDA) in 1970. More than 430 radio and television stations and specialty services from across Canada are members of the Council.
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All CBSC decisions, Codes, links to members’ and other web sites, and related information are available on the World Wide Web at www.cbsc.ca. For more information, please contact the National Chair of the CBSC, Ron Cohen, at (###) ###-####.