Ottawa, February 24, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released its decision concerning a report on “sexual assault drugs” which aired on W5, CTV’s well-known public affairs program. A viewer complained that the report was biased against all men because it presented “an unfair stereotype and negative portrayal of men by implying all men (potentially) would use drugs to rape.”
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Sex-Role Portrayal Code. It found no code violation. The Council noted that the complainant had misrepresented what was actually said in the report. While the complainant alleged that the reporter had asked a victim of sexual assault “how she could not ‘hate all men’”, the Council noted that the question which was actually put to the interviewee by the reporter was “both balanced and reasonable”, namely “How do you tread the fine line between being wary and not hating all men?” The Council found that “the question as put was thoughtful and relevant in the context of this report and hardly in contravention of any of the provisions of the Sex-Role Portrayal Code.”
Moreover, the fact that some of the incidents depicted in the W5 report involved inappropriate, even criminal, actions on the part of some men did not in any way promote or otherwise convey hatred of all men, contrary to what the complainant appears to be alleging. Rather, the Council considers that the report aimed at attempting to understand the feelings of women traumatized by this insidious pharmaceutical device misused for the purposes of sexual assault. It is also clear, in the view of the Council, that CTV went out of its way to ensure that the report did not reflect negatively on all men by focussing on the campaign launched by a male McGill University student to alert his fellow students to this dangerous drug.
Canada’s private broadcasters have created industry standards in the form of Codes on ethics, gender portrayal and television violence by which they expect their members will abide. They also created the CBSC, which is the self-regulatory body with the responsibility of administering those Codes, as well as the Code dealing with journalistic practices created by the Radio Television News Directors Association Canada (RTNDA). 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 (###) ###-####.