Ottawa, August 30, 2000 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released two decisions concerning CILQ-FM’s (Toronto) broadcast of the Howard Stern Show. Both complaints dealt with Stern’s use of the term “retard”, and, in the second case, with comments concerning mentally challenged persons.
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaints under the human rights provision of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics. In the first case, the Council found that the use of the term by a belly dancer to describe the man who took her virginity at the age of 15 and then by Stern to state that most “retards” listen to his show and that he is the “King of Retards”, was not abusively discriminatory. The Council noted, referring to a previous decision, that
the usage of the word “retard” in this case is even further removed from a breach of the Code because it is not even conveying the meaning of mental deficiency. Its use in this case, by both the belly dancer and by Howard Stern, refers to the street level colloquial meaning which the word now carries. The word is now sometimes used interchangeably with such other insults as “jerk”, “idiot” and “creep”. ...
In the end, while the Council deplores the crude, offensive, infantile and irresponsible terminology used by the host and, on a general societal level, deplores the fact that a word such as “retard” has developed into such a “street term”, the Council must conclude that the only issue raised in this case is one of taste, something the Council has always held should be left for listeners to decide via the on/off switch.
In the second case presented to the Ontario Regional Council, comments were made by Stern and his staff to the effect “that ‘a retarded home’ will diminish surrounding property values, that ‘retarded’ persons do cruel things to animals, that ‘retarded’ persons are more prone to commit rape and do socially unacceptable things in public and so on.” The Council had “no hesitation” in concluding that Stern and his cohorts has “made fun of the protected group” in this case and thus breached Clause 2 of the CAB Code of Ethics.
The Council further noted that while CILQ-FM’s editing process to excise commentary which might be viewed as being in breach of Canadian private broadcaster standards was “working to a considerable extent”, it noted that, in this case, “the broadcaster’s Stern Show producer was not as cautious in the editing of the segment” and, indeed, had been edging closer to the line with respect to such commentary. The Council concluded that “[i]f the only way for the broadcaster to ensure that it does not cross the line is for it to err on the side of caution, removing more of the continually tasteless commentary than it might otherwise remove, then this is the course of action it must take.”
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 (###) ###-####.