Ottawa, January 7, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released its decision concerning a news report on the controversy surrounding women exposing their breasts in public. The report, which aired on CTV’s National News at 11 p.m. on June 10, 1997, included scenes of topless women and women in bathing suits. One complainant described CTV News’ coverage of the controversial issue as “one of the most pornographic, dehumanizing, degrading and exploitative media coverages of women that I have seen.”
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the Sex-Role Portrayal Code of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) and the Code of (Journalistic) Ethics of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA). The Council found no breach of these Codes by the broadcaster, noting that “a careful review of the complaints reveals that the issue for the complainants relates more to the matter being covered than the coverage of the matter.”
[T]he Ontario Regional Council has no hesitation in finding that the coverage of the topless issue by CTV was entirely justified. This issue, like many others in the news, was controversial, but it was also Canadian, relevant to other Canadians (whichever side of the substantive issue they might favour) and entitled to coverage, including the expected visual component. Moreover, the Council can find nothing in the CTV coverage itself which can be described, to use the words of the complaints, as degrading, dehumanizing, exploitative or devaluing. ...
The Council finds that CTV was mindful of the level of tolerance of its viewers when it broadcast its June 10 report on the topless issue. No prolonged or close-up scenes of bare breasts were included in the report; rather, CTV chose to edit out such scenes through the use of image distortion or creative photography. The Council notes that these steps were taken by CTV despite the fact that the report aired at 11 p.m., well after the watershed hour (which, although created for the purpose of the Violence Code, has generally been used by broadcasters as a rough threshold for all types of “adult content”).
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 (###) ###-####.