Ottawa, October 13, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) announces the appointment of Dean Cooper and Mason Loh to its British Columbia Regional Council.
Dean Cooper, a broadcast member, is the Vice-President and General Manager of CKOV-AM and CKLZ-FM, Kelowna. He has also been President of the Kelowna and B.C. Chambers of Commerce and continues to serve on the Board of Governors of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce. As a very active member of his community, he serves currently as a Trustee and the Chair of School District #23 and as President of the Okanagan Kids Care Fund Society. Dean Cooper’s other community activities have included serving as Chair or Director of the Kelowna General Hospital Foundation Board, the Canadian Cancer Society Board (B.C. and Yukon Division) and the Central Okanagan Community Learning Society, among others. In 1996, the B.C. Association of Broadcasters names him Broadcaster of the Year and, in 1997, he received the Kelowna Business Excellence Award as Entrepreneur of the Year.
Mason Loh, Q.C., a public member, is a lawyer and community activist. He has practiced general corporate and commercial law for 15 years and taught as an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Law at UBC in 1987. As an active member of the community, Mason Loh served as the Chairman of S.U.C.C.E.S.S. (United Chinese Community Enrichment Services Society), one of the largest social service agencies and Chinese Community organizations in Canada, for four years (1994 - 1998), and has been a frequent media participant on legal and community issues. He is the incumbent Chairman of the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine & Acupuncture Practitioners of British Columbia (a provincially legislated self-regulatory body) and a board member of such charitable and public organizations as United Way of the Lower Mainland, St. Paul’s Hospital Foundation, the Law Courts Education Society of B.C. and the Laurier Institution.
The B.C. Council, like all other CBSC Regional Councils across the country, is made up of three public and three broadcast representatives. The Chair of the B.C. Council is Sally Warren, former CRTC Regional Commissioner for British Columbia and the Yukon, author of Dumped! (1998) and a CBSC public member since 1997. The Vice-Chair is Hudson Mack, Anchor and Assistant News Director of CHEK-TV in Victoria, a CBSC broadcast member since 1997. There is one public member vacancy.
CBSC National Chair Ron Cohen stated: “This is an important time for the broadcast industry’s self-regulatory body. As the public have become more and more aware of this unique system established by Canada’s private broadcasters, we have become busier and yet, at the same time, more responsive to public complaints. None of the present challenges could be met without the dedication and thoughtfulness of our Regional Council volunteers. We are fortunate to have been able to attract individuals with such outstanding records of public service, commitment and leadership.”
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 (###) ###-####.