Ottawa, August 28, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released a decision concerning an episode of CITY-TV’s (Toronto) Fashion Television. A viewer had complained that by airing an episode which included a report on a fashion photo shoot featuring three “adult film stars” in the early evening viewing hours, the broadcaster had “managed to legitimise pornography, denigrate women, vilify healthy human sexuality and outrage your audience – all at a time when young children are around and quite possibly watching your show.”
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics, Violence Code and Sex-Role Portrayal Code. It found no breach of any of these Codes. The Council noted that Fashion Television reports on “fashion news”. Referring to previous decisions concerning Fashion Television or other programs which were alleged by viewers to amount to “sex-ploitation”, the Council found that “the content of the broadcast of Fashion Television in question was [not] in any way exploitative of or degrading to women.”
The Council also considered issues relating to scheduling and viewer advisories. As to Fashion Television’s early evening time slot, it did not find that
any of the descriptions or scenes in the episode of Fashion Television in question fall within the category of programming “intended for adult audiences” thereby triggering the application of the scheduling provisions of the Violence Code (which are also generally used by broadcasters and the CBSC for all types of adult programming.
Nor did the Council find that any viewer advisory or warning was required in this case but it did note that “the broadcaster, thoughtfully, did provide sufficient warning and reaction time for viewers to make an informed choice as to whether they wished to continue to watch the program” by constructing the report “in such a way as to minimize viewership by those who might be offended by the subject matter and associated scenes.”
In response to the complainant’s query as to “how on earth did such content escape the notice of the CRTC”, the Council made the following comments concerning the CBSC’s mandate.
The CBSC’s mandate is one of responsiveness to public complaints and not censorship by way of anticipation of potential Code breaches. In the event of the expression of concern by one or more members of the public, the CBSC will become involved in the resolution of a complaint; however, it will always await such a complaint before becoming involved in a programming issue. In that sense, therefore, members of the public should be aware that all programming will escape the notice of the CBSC (or the CRTC, which operates on the same basis) unless and until it becomes the subject of a written complaint. Canadian society is, on balance, far better served that way.
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 (###) ###-####.