Ottawa, December 16, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released its decision concerning a news item on carbon monoxide detectors (or CO alarms), broadcast by CTV during its late evening newscast. A viewer complained that the report was exaggerated and alarmist and “attempted to destroy an entire industry.”
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Codes of Ethics of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) and the Radio Television News Directors Association (RTNDA). The Council did not find that the report breached broadcast standards but was sufficiently uncomfortable with it to call it “an example of on-the-edge journalism”. The Council stated:
In the first place, the Council does not find that the report was anything like irreproachably accurate, which it ought to have been. The inclusion of the declarative words such as “observed by the Ontario Fire Marshall’s office” is a case in point. That the Seneca professor who conducted the test also works for the Ontario Fire Marshall’s office is hardly sufficient to support the claim that the Fire Marshall’s office was in any way officially involved, which is precisely the implication of the language used in the newscast. It was likely included to add credibility to the story when, on that point, the Council is unsure as to whether such a conclusion was merited.
Similarly, the Council questions whether the scientifically dependable sense of the phrase “weeks of testing” fairly or accurately describes the so-called “new study” the results of which were reported by CTV. The Council notes that, in a similar but not congruent case concerning a report on the potential dangers of indoor playgrounds at fast food restaurants in the Edmonton area, namely, CFRN-TV re Eyewitness News (CBSC Decision 96/97-0149, December 16, 1997), the Prairie Regional Council did not find the news report sensationalized because of the extent of the broadcaster’s disclosure of the relatively unscientific nature of the testing ...
No such description or disclosure of the method of conducting the tests was given to CTV’s audience by this report. The viewers were given no solid information relating to the nature of the testing on the basis of which they might be able to form a judgment regarding its unimpeachability. This contrasts with the CFRN situation, in which the Edmonton audience was informed of the relatively unscientific nature of the study. That, too, is a legitimate form of disclosure which permits a thinking audience to draw reasonable conclusions on the basis of the information proffered, an evaluative opportunity which CTV’s viewers were unable to exercise.
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 (###) ###-####.