Since this week, the CJMS Media Group has been hosting Quebec conspirator Amélie Paul on the airwaves of one of its Web radios. The show Amélie’s mornings by CJMS Rock actually covers the eponymous Facebook Live by Mme Paul.
The first web radio relay, linking the 35and grind of Mornings of Amélie, was proposed last Wednesday. The two-hour production revolved around the guest of the day, Jarred Neil, presented as “exorcist, medium, clairvoyant, shaman and specialist in haunted houses”.
The controversy of the day has long been discussed: actor Will Smith’s slap in the face to comedian Chris Rock after a joke about the actor’s wife’s shaved head at the recent Oscars. Mr. Neil claimed that it was a planned scandal, since the pharmaceutical company Pfizer, sponsor of the event, would be about to launch a drug against alopecia, a disease from which the wife of Will Smith suffers . Supposed links between Mr. Smith and the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein have also been mentioned. The usual routine, what.
We see daily the radical effects of the Internet on broadcasting policy.
The result of occult forces
Mme Paul constantly relays on social networks the basics of conspiracy theories, claiming in particular that current socio-political events are the result of occult, planned and hidden forces, for the benefit of a small group of super-powerful manipulators. It also makes a lot of room for esoteric teachings.
Amélie Paul has repeatedly given voice to conspiratorial criticism of vaccines against COVID-19. She was also at the center of a Radio-Canada report on singer Bernard Lachance, who died in May 2021 after rejecting rational medicine.
“She’s an excellent facilitator,” said the Homework Jocelyn Benoit, owner and president of Groupe CJMS Média, to explain the hiring of Mme Paul. “She has a degree in communications. People don’t have to listen to a radio station that employs a host they don’t like. »
Before its takeover and its transfer online by Mr. Benoît, the CJMS radio, based in Saint-Constant, occupied the 1040 of the AM band. In 1999, it took over the callsign formerly used by Montreal talk radio CJMS 1280, from 1954 to 1994.
“I owe nothing to the CRTC”
The owner of the radio, himself a presenter, recalls the absence of government control over the content broadcast on the Web. “I owe nothing to the CRTC. The CJMS platform belongs to me and I am not accountable to anyone,” he said in a courteous and non-aggressive tone.
University of Montreal professor Pierre Trudel confirms this: as early as 1999, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) adopted an exception order for digital media, stating that it would have no impact on the objectives of the law that governs the organization. The order was renewed in 2006 and again in 2009.
“Obviously, today is a bit of a laugh,” says the communications law specialist and columnist at the Homework, which does not comment on the specific case of CJMS. “Every day we see the radical effects of the Internet on broadcasting policy. »
In addition, the CRTC has all but stopped sanctioning traditional radio stations, like during the Radio X licensing crisis in the early 2000s, he notes.
Could Bill C-11 on the modernization of the Broadcasting Act, which is before Parliament in Ottawa, correct the situation by giving the CRTC free rein to also regulate activities on the Web? “The CRTC ended up in a regulatory coma for 20 years,” replies Professor Trudel. He was lax, and it would be difficult now to start imposing stricter rules on traditional radio stations when he refuses to impose any rules on radio stations that are on the Internet. »
A resignation
The tangent taken by certain CJMS programs led to the resignation of host Laurent Lépine even before the arrival of the controversial Mme Paul as host.
The man, who was piloting an English program on CJMS Rock, explains that he started asking questions when Jocelyn Benoit received Amélie Paul as a guest last fall.
He then cut ties a few weeks ago, when his boss welcomed another well-known Quebec conspirator: actress and singer Lucie Laurier.
“I answered him on the cat : “Coudonc, after that, who will it be, Alexis Cossette-Trudel?” says Mr. Lépine in an interview, referring to the most famous conspirator in Quebec. “I told him that I absolutely did not want to be associated, either near or far, with these happy fools. I said that if he received Lucie Laurier, I was leaving. He replied: “Message received.” CJMS employs about thirty animators.
Amélie Paul also leads a career as a singer. The request to interview her was directed to her manager Sly Chapel (Sylvain Lachapelle), also station manager CJMS Pop, who declined the offer.