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Arpig -> RE: Fox News Will Not Be Moving Into Canada After All (3/4/2011 12:30:35 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydawg
I don't know the details, but it seems like someone (if not the state whom?) would have to at some point judge whether the proof is valid.
Or else it would be entirely meaningless, right?
How can the proof/evidence be judged with out a judge?
Well given that the regulation has never been invoked against any broadcaster, this really is a tempest in a teapot. In addition the CRTC (which administers the regulation in question) has no power to fine or imprison, all it could do would be to deny or revoke a broadcast lisence if the broadcaster had repeatedly refused to comply with the regulations.
Remember, this is not a new law being passed, it is an amendment to an existing law that is not being instituted.
The existing rules prohibit knowingly broadcasting false or misleading news. They proposed regulation would amend that section to read: “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." Thus broadening the scope for deliberatly broadcasting false stories, for example broadcasting a story that the stock of one particular company had crashed when it in fact had not would be likely to cause a sell-off which would cause financial harm to many people, under the old regulations this would not be allowed, under the new it would.
Now this all goes back to the case of Ernst Zundel, where the Supreme Court ruled that an individual could not be preosecuted for spreading false information. However, under Canadian law, individual rights do not extend to corproations...they are not individuals. Thus the Supreme Court ruling has no direct baering on the CRTC regulations, however there was a fear that the regulations would not stand up to a court challenge under the Charter of Rights. However, given the above fact regarding corproations rights as opposed to individual rights, it is entirely possible that it would survive such a challenge...we shall have to wait and see.
As it stands now, you can broadcast whatever you want, but if somebody (a listener/viewer) decides that the story is false, they can complain to the CRTC, which will then contact the broadcaster, who has only to show that they did not know it was false at the time it was broadcast, the simplest method would to be to point to the research done before the airing of the story. If the CRTC determined that the broadcaster did indeed know it was false, then there would be no fines, no prison, no criminal charges, rather the CRTC would issue its findings, issue a warning to the broadcaster, and perhaps require a public retraction. If that same broadcaster repeatedly broke the regulation, then when the time comes for its broadcasting lisence to be renewed, the CRTC could refuse to do so. If the CRTC were to do so without sufficient provocation, then the decision would be reviewed by the appropriate Parliamentary commission (the one that suggested making changes in the first place) and either thrown out or confirmed.
As I stated earlier, this regulation has never been invoked in the 20+ years it has been in force, so its not like we have a ministry of truth overseeing our airwaves, its just that up here, a broadcaster has to do a little research (or carefully word their story) to ensure that they are sure they are not lying.
It is interesting, though, that Sanity thinks this is somehow directed at Fox, or the right wing broadcasters, clearly he seems to think that a conservative broadcaster must lie in order to get its message across...sad really. The fact of the matter is that it doesn't have anything to do with Fox (which doesn't broadcast in Canada) or a right-wing viewpoint (in fact the CRTC just approved a lisence for SunTV - a specifically right-wing network), the whole thing was due to a question on the viability of the regulation in light of a supreme court ruling, and the question was put to the CRTC about the time Fox News was founded, so it clearly has nothing to do with trying to keep Fox out of Canada, its just about insuring journalistic integrity.
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