The CRTC has approved an application by the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) to increase the maximum percentage of proceeds from the Independent Local News Fund that can be allocated to any one station or group of stations operated by the same licensee in a given market from 10% to 12% in any given year. The change will take effect Sept. 1, the beginning of the 2021-22 broadcast year.
The Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) says discretionary services, Starz 1 and Starz 2, violated the Canadian Association of Broadcasters (CAB) Ethics and Violence Codes when it aired numerous films containing coarse language prior to 9 p.m. The decision concerns multiple broadcasts in Dec. 2020 and Jan. 2021. The CBSC says viewer advisories on a number of the broadcasts did not mention key elements of the programs, such as sexual content and violence. The broadcasts in question included feature films like High Fidelity, Ramy, The Right Kind of Wrong, The Hangover and Bridesmaids. The CBSC Panel considered that all of the broadcasts were acceptably rated 14+, though the episode of Ramy was close to the 18+ line given its mature sexual theme.
CBC says it doesn’t plan to appeal a court decision that found the Conservative Party of Canada’s use of its coverage and news clips in 2019 federal election advertising was fair use. “While we don’t agree with the Court’s decision, we have decided that launching an appeal could risk further damage to our reputation at a time when Canadians are depending on us for news and information they can trust,” the public broadcaster stated in a post to its corporate website June 11. “This issue is bigger than one court case. Around the world, credible, reliable journalism has never been more critical to the health of our democracies. Manipulating content for partisan purposes undermines the public’s trust in that vital work. CBC/Radio-Canada will continue to defend the integrity of its journalism, and we urge political parties and interest groups to commit to keeping journalistic content out of their campaign materials.”
APTN is the winner of the 2020 Michener Award for meritorious public service journalism for Death by Neglect, a stark investigation that delves into a First Nations child-welfare system in which three sisters took their own lives. This year’s finalists included CBC News (Inside Rideau Hall); The Globe and Mail (Silenced); Montreal Gazette (The Dorval seniors’ home); La Presse (The Other Epidemic: sexual exploitation of kids on the internet); and the Winnipeg Free Press (A Stain on Our Game). Closing out its 50th anniversary year, the Michener Award was founded in 1970 by the late Roland Michener, then governor general, to honour excellence in public service journalism.
The Globe and Mail has won this year’s Canadian Journalism Foundation (CJF) Jackman Award for Excellence in Journalism in the large-media category at theCanadian Journalism Foundation Awards. The Globe was honoured for its series investigating why Ottawa and the Public Health Agency were unable to respond effectively to the COVID-19 crisis despite Canada’s heavy investment in pandemic preparedness after the SARS outbreak. Named after CJF founder Eric Jackman, the award honours news organizations, large and small, that embody exemplary journalism and have a profound and positive impact on the communities they serve. In the small-media category, Victoria-based not-for-profit publication, The Narwhal, won for its reporting based on freedom-of-information requests on the Site C dam, the most expensive public project in B.C. history.
