The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has just rendered a decision against the Société Radio-Canada (SRC) that combines absurdity with ineptitude, and which reveals major legal shortcomings. If this verdict is not challenged and then overturned, its consequences will seriously impede broadcasters’ freedom of expression and undermine journalistic independence. Radio-Canada cannot bow down.
It all started, with an irony that does not lack superb, with the broadcast of a short six-minute segment on the show 15-18 of August 17, 2020 entitled “Are certain ideas becoming taboo? “. At the microphone of host Annie Desrochers, columnist Simon Jodoin returns to a burning news of the week: the fact that a petition condemns a Concordia professor for “anti-black violence” after she named the title of the work of the author Pierre Vallières white niggers of america.
The complaint of an outraged listener went to the CRTC. In a very summary judgment unveiled on Wednesday, the Council blamed Radio-Canada: the segment did not respect certain statements of the Broadcasting Act, and everything was not done to “mitigate the impact of the word in n audience, especially in today’s social context. The current social context? The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and the aftermath of the tragic death of American George Floyd, which has caused social reflection on racism and changed our approach to certain words.
It should be noted that Radio-Canada has never questioned the importance of this context nor, either, the need to show respect in the presentation of more delicate and thorny subjects — we also fully subscribe to this. These precautions, however, must not lead to outright censorship or the omission of certain facts, the cornerstone of journalism. Naming the title of a work in a segment relating to said work can only correspond to the basics of journalism.
Of all these mistakes that abound in the academic and media world and with which we have not finished blackening our forums, it is the excesses and the erasure of common sense that give rise to the most outrageous positions. The CRTC’s decision adds to this sad and long list.
The CRTC seems to forget principles that it must nevertheless strive to defend loud and clear, such as freedom of expression and journalistic independence. He digs right and left in his policies and regulations to find a few passages to satisfy an appetite for fashionable political correctness. The CRTC wrote a decision that oozes the enslavement of ideas for the benefit of identity diktats, all without taking into account the least in the world — and it’s a real scandal! — the specificity of the CBC/Radio-Canada French network. Excerpt: “The Council also finds that the broadcast of the segment of the program 15-18 has not contributed to the strengthening of the cultural and social fabric and the reflection of the multicultural and multiracial character of Canadian society as provided for in paragraph 3(1)(d) and subparagraph 3(1)(m)(viii) of [la] Law. » Wham.
The tastiest flesh of this decision is found in the masterful dissenting opinions written by CRTC Vice-Chair Caroline J. Simard and Manitoba and Saskatchewan Advisor Joanne T. Levy. Both are indignant at seeing the CRTC neglect to rely on the law. The decision, they recall, departs from fundamental principles recently upheld by the Supreme Court, including the fact that there is no such thing in freedom of expression as the protection of the “right NOT to be insulted “.
What will Radio-Canada do? A spokesperson said Friday that the state-owned company would take the necessary time before disclosing its reaction to the judgment, which ordered it to apologize publicly, to describe what it intends to put in place to better deal with “a similar subject and elaborate on how she will “tone down” the segment of the show, which can still be watched on digital platforms. Very heavy penalties for such a lightly thought out judgment.
It is assumed that internally, the debates are vigorous. As President of CBC/Radio-Canada, Catherine Tait has never hidden her strong penchant for including cultural communities in the deployment of her news and programming. This is its spearhead, and it is much more visible on the English side than on the French side. What is socially acceptable at the SRC is it also for the CBC – which fired host Wendy Mesley for naming the title of Pierre Vallières’ work? This heavy question of meaning hovers over the rest of things.
However, the necessary decision is to challenge the sentence rendered by the CRTC. With vigor and strength. In the name of journalistic integrity and independence. In the name of the specificity of the SRC, which does not address the same audience as the CBC. And in the name of the necessary survival of ideas, which must not end up in the cemetery of taboos.