À lire sur le site du Toronto Star.
Un texte de Stephen Bede Scharper.
A recent, little-noticed news item may result in a deep and indelible blemish on the Canadian mosaic.
Earlier this month, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), without fanfare, posted on its website a potential game-changer in the world of broadcast journalism. The CRTC is seeking to relax restrictions concerning the broadcasting of specious information on radio and television.
Currently, the law stipulates that broadcasters “shall not broadcast any false or misleading news.”
Sounds reasonable enough — and straightforward — as it should, since it concerns the integrity of news reporting.
But not apparently to the CRTC. It is proposing to soften the regulation, banning “any news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”
In short, with the new wording, broadcasters could air false or misleading news with impunity, provided that it does not endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.
Unfortunately, the CRTC does not specify who will judge whether or not such disinformation poses a danger.
An aphorism comes to mind, “If it’s fixed, break it.”
The CRTC is apparently responding to concerns raised by Parliament’s standing joint committee for the scrutiny of regulations, which worried that such a sweeping ban may not withstand a court challenge under the Charter of Rights.
It seems, however, that the societal benefits of a commitment to truth-telling in broadcasting far outweigh any potential legal potholes emerging with a hypothetical court case in future.
As University of Ottawa law professor and media expert Michael Geist points out, there is some irony in the CRTC’s timing. Just as the U.S., reeling from the Arizona massacre that targeted Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, is reflecting on the wider social impact of its poisoned airwaves, the CRTC is embracing a more U.S.-style approach.
This is made all the more disconcerting as a new right-leaning all-news network, Sun TV News, prepares for its debut in March. In a recent interview, Geist observed there’s a growing fear that Canada is about to adopt the more bellicose U.S. approach to political news coverage. The CRTC’s proposed change will only deepen these fears.
“I think that those same kinds of fears are out there in much the same way (as they are in the U.S.). This just provides freer licence to do it,” Geist commented.
Yet concerns over journalistic integrity in Canada are not new. Over the past 15 years, many have sounded warnings, and some of the clearest and most compelling tocsins have been rung by the venerable dean of Canadian journalists, Knowlton Nash.
The former anchorman for CBC’s The National, with more than half a century’s experience in print and broadcast journalism, Nash laments the obsession of the media with the pursuit of “trivia,” as well as its increasing preoccupation with “entertainment and gossip” at the expense of well-grounded analysis and truly investigative reporting.
In his book, Trivia Pursuit: How Showbiz Values Are Corrupting the News (1998), Nash sees the “dumbing down” of the news and the supplanting of crucial political events by celebrity scuttlebutt as nothing less than a threat to Canadian democracy.
In a series of lectures he once graciously delivered to my undergraduate students, Nash noted that when serving as an “unembedded” CBC journalist during the war in Vietnam, he was with a U.S. platoon as it engaged in a firefight. He saw several U.S. troops killed.
When he attended the official U.S. military briefing later that afternoon, however, a U.S. army media official stated unequivocally that there had been “no casualties” that day. (There was a reason journalists called those official afternoon briefings the “five o’clock follies.”)
For Nash, while the full truth of any situation will always at some level elude us, the commitment to truth-telling, which was a hallmark of his journalism career, should never be watered down.
The CRTC is accepting comments on its proposed ruling change until Feb. 9. For information on how to submit comments, visit http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2011/2011-14.htm.
There is still time to share with the commission a commitment to keeping broadcast news free of lies and misleading information, for any “news” that deliberately misleads can only be the product of a society that is seriously misguided.
Stephen Bede Scharper is associate professor of environmental studies and religious studies at the University of Toronto.
Media New Year’s ResolutionsA lire sur le site du Columbia Journalism Reviews
No point giving up dark chocolate, red wine, or blacker-than-black coffee. We’re journalists. We’d last a week. Max.
And exercise? An hour sweating it out in a bikram yoga class is quickly undone by ten minutes of back-curving labor in front of your grimy Mac book. Forget it. No point. Save the money for vino.
We might as well make our new year’s resolutions realistic and focus on what we can do better as reporters and readers in 2011. Right?
Will you avoid promoting stock-standard unsubstantiated political narratives? Finally make an effort to understand what the kids are doing on Twitter? Finally start that book proposal? Go the extra mile and get four subjects in stead of three for your next trend story? Stop donating to Democratic candidates?
And, as a news consumer, will you close that Gawker window with the pics of Ladybug O’Donnell and get back to the New Yorker review you’ve been meaning to read? Will you start paying for online content? Will you give Parker/Spitzer the chance they so richly deserve?
Let us know your journalistic New Year’s Resolutions. And check back with us in a week to let us know if you kept them.
Duty DoubleA lire sur le site du Columbia Journalism Reviews
Duty Double : when nouns and verbs collide par Merrill Perlman
Headlines are supposed to grab a reader’s attention and provide a fast synopsis of an article for a busy reader. So what’s a reader to think happened when she reads this?
“U.S. rules on tax adopted by state”
Or this?
“Council hires ban bid taxi firm”
FCC Passes Net Neutrality Policy (Sort Of)À lire sur le site du Columbia Journalism Reviews
FCC Passes Net Neutrality Policy (Sort Of) : And the press plays all the angles par Lauren Kirchner
The Federal Communications Commission voted three to two on Tuesday afternoon to approve a new set of rules governing the practices of broadband Internet service providers. The new policy bans discrimination by Internet companies of any specific online service. But does not go so far as to bar those from charging more money for faster service, leaving open the potential for a “tiered Internet” scenario.
Michel Houellebecq
« L’écriture ne soulage guère. Elle retrace, elle délimite. Elle introduit un soupçon de cohérence, l’idée d’un réalisme. »
Francis Bacon« La lecture apporte à l’homme plénitude, le discours assurance et l’écriture exactitude.»
Relations publiques«Relations publiques: j’ai des relations, je me moque du public.» -Normand Baillargeon, Petit Guide d’autodéfense intellectuelle-
CitationMy books are water; those of the great geniuses are wine. Everybody drinks water.
Mark Twain
Citations«J’ai accompli de délicieux voyages, embarqués sur un mot.»
Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850)
