Two days after Radio-Canada was reprimanded by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) because the word was not mentioned in a column, here are several former headliners of the Crown corporation at the barricades and beg the public broadcaster not to apologize.
Remember that the CRTC, the body that regulates electronic media in the country, agreed on Wednesday to a series of complaints and is now asking Radio-Canada to apologize for an intervention by columnist Simon Jodoin in August 2020 on the radio show 15-18, hosted by Annie Desrochers. The latter are reproached for having quoted the essay white niggers of america by Pierre Vallières talking about the controversy of the day: the suspension, at the time, of a professor from the University of Ottawa after using the n-word in an academic context.
However, for 14 Radio-Canada alumni who co-signed an open letter on Friday in The Press, naming the title of the book in its entirety was quite appropriate in the context. “We cannot ignore the fact that the CRTC, by its decision, denies the history of Quebec and, in this particular case, an episode where French-speaking thinkers from Canada and black Americans came together in the name of discrimination. that we would say today “systemic” and that they considered shared”, can we read in this missive ratified among others by Bernard Derome and Jean-François Lépine.
Senator Julie Miville-Dechêne, former information boss Alain Saulnier and former ombudsman Guy Gendron are also part of the group. Among other things, they denounce “the intrusion of a regulatory body in the editorial policy of the public broadcaster”. The CRTC “literally flouts the broadcaster’s editorial independence,” they add. As such, the signatories do not fail to recall that Radio-Canada’s public watchdog had already ruled in October 2020 that the complaints against Simon Jodoin’s column were not justified.
Freedom of expression under threat
In a split decision, the CRTC instead concluded that Radio-Canada in this episode “did not exercise sufficient caution and vigilance in the way it handled the remarks, which may have had a detrimental effect on its audience, especially the black community. Then, the Commission goes even further, criticizing the public broadcaster for having failed to reflect the “multicultural and multiracial nature of Canadian society”, taking the trouble to emphasize that Radio-Canada must broadcast content that meets the ” standards established by society.
For the 14 Radio-Canada alumni, this interpretation of the public broadcaster’s mandate encroaches on freedom of expression. “Does this mean that freedom of expression only exists for comments and content that comply with social norms? That Radio-Canada would therefore have the obligation to broadcast content that is in line with the majority and dominant opinion? In our view, this is an indefensible position, contrary to the very idea of freedom of expression,” they write.
They are now imploring their former employer to appeal this case. For the time being, we do not know the intentions of Radio-Canada: its leaders have still not reacted officially to the CRTC’s decision.