Ottawa, November 25, 1999 - The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) announces the appointment of Sandra Whiting to its Ontario Regional Council.
Sandra Whiting has been a leader in the Toronto community over the course of the past two decades working extensively in both the African Canadian and wider populace. In addition to her service as Managing Editor of Excellence Magazine and her role as Community Arts Programmer at Harbourfront Centre, she has served as Fundraising Chair of the YWCA and Co-Chair of the Women of Distinction Awards. As a storyteller of renown, Sandra relates African and Caribbean myths, legends and folk tales that convey lessons about life and has performed her storytelling repertoire at the Royal Ontario Museum, the St. Lawrence Centre and on TVO’s Romper Room and CFMT’s Upfront. She is currently President of the Black Business and Professional Association, Vice-Chair of the Royal Bank Small Business Advisory Committee, a member of the Fundraising Committee of the Jamaican Canadian Association and a Board Member of the Empire Club of Canada. Sandra also manages her own health and well-being business among other entrepreneurial ventures.
The Ontario Council, like all other CBSC Regional Councils across the country, is made up of three public and three broadcast representatives. The Chair of the Ontario Council is Al MacKay, acting General Manager of the Cable Public Affairs Channel (CPAC) and former Co-Chair of the Action Group on Violence on Television, (AGVOT) and a CBSC broadcast member since 1990. The ViceChair is Robert Stanbury, lawyer with the Hamilton law firm of Inch, Easterbrook and Shaker and former member of Parliament and Cabinet Minister, and a CBSC public member since 1990. The other Ontario Regional Council public member is actor and former MediaWatch Executive Director and past President of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists (ACTRA) Meg Hogarth. The other broadcast members are Paul Fockler, former radio station owner and operator and past President of the Central Canada Broadcasters Association, who now works in Regulatory Affairs for Shaw Radio in Barrie, and Madeline Ziniak, VicePresident and Executive Producer at CFMT International, who serves on the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Joint Societal Issues and Trends Committee and chairs the Communications Committee of the Canadian Advertising Foundation's Race Relations Advisory Council.
CBSC National Chair Ron Cohen stated: “The past five years have been an important growing time for the broadcast industry’s self-regulatory body and no single Regional Council has had to bear more of the burden of the decision load than that of Ontario. It is of crucial importance to the CBSC to attract strong and diverse community representation to ensure that our broadcast content decisions take broad social perspective into account. None of our ongoing challenges could possibly be met without the dedication and thoughtfulness of our Regional Council volunteers. We are fortunate to be able, on a continuing basis, to attract individuals such as Sandra Whiting 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 (###) ###-####.