Ottawa, August 28, 1999 – The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) today released a decision concerning a sports commentary which was aired on CFGO-AM (popularly known as OSR 1200 in Ottawa). A listener complained that “the announcer began editorializing about the contribution of Francophones to baseball, the Province of Quebec and Lucien Bouchard; all in a very negative manner.”
The Ontario Regional Council considered the complaint under the human rights provision of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics. It found no breach. The Council stated:
In the Council’s view, the overall majority of Jim Rome’s comments made in that sports commentary were of a political nature and, therefore, “fall squarely within the bounds which freedom of expression is meant to protect.” They related to the new baseball stadium, the role of the Expos’ coach Felipe Alou, the involvement of de facto baseball commissioner Bud Selig and the political implications of the involvement of Premier Lucien Bouchard in the matter. Incidentally, the commentator found it appropriate to inject his own irrelevant views on “voting for Lucien”, a matter which certainly exceeded the thrust of his Commentary and, to the Council, an obvious “cheap” and unnecessary shot. He also went even further in extending his inappropriate and incorrect cheap shots to “Frenchies” and their entitlement to have a major league baseball club.
The Council considered that “comments such as ‘Boy, the Frenchies are too much, aren’t they?’ must be distinguished from comments such as ‘I’d vote Communist before I voted for Lucien’ because it is no longer merely expressing a political opinion; it is rather labelling a group on the basis of its culture or ethnic origin.” It did not find, however, that the comments were abusively discriminatory.
In this case, the Council is of the view that the sports commentator did paint all “Frenchies” (whether the term was meant to designate Francophones in general, the Québécois people, or only the Francophone segment of that population) with the same brush of being “too much”. The Council does not consider, however, that such a comment is so offensive and demeaning as to be considered abusively discriminatory. While the statement and, especially, the tone in which it was delivered left the Council frankly uncomfortable, the Council does not find the offensive comments so egregious that they amount to a breach of the human rights provision of the Code of Ethics.
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 (###) ###-####.