It is not every day that a radio station gets shut down. But that is what the CRTC wanted to do to CHOI-FM in Quebec City. It judged the popular broadcaster’s license should be taken away.

However, last week, the Federal Court of Appeal put the number one station in the market back on the air until the court had finished deliberating the case put by the broadcaster as to why it should remain open.

CHOI specializes in shock. Its top show features animator Jean-François Fillion on a daily prowl looking to attack. Discussion on his show of gays, immigrants and women’s rights had the CRTC convinced the station was spreading hatred.

Quebec social activists attending a study conference this past weekend, called CHOI radio poubelle or “radio garbage can.” At a panel discussion, part of the tenth anniversary event hosted by Alternatives (the international development NGO based in Montreal, and partner of rabble.ca) NDP leader Jack Layton, and Bloc MP Pierre Paquette were questioned about their parties’ stand on the issue of closing the station down.

Layton had called for an intermediary step to be taken, permitting more public dialogue, rather than simply allowing the CRTC to shut the station down. The Bloc has supported the appeal process but has refused to back the station. Paquette told activists how new Bloc MPs from the Quebec City region were being subjected to death threats, aimed not just at themselves, but at their families as well, because they had not defended Fillion, and his station.

CHOI employs 40 people and claims an audience of 380,000. Explaining its appeal to residents of an urbane, sophisticated city, established nearly 400 years ago, would tax a trained sociological imagination. But, Quebec City has long been noted for its social and spatial divisions, between lower and upper Quebec City, English and French, Laval University and the under-educated, and now, alienated populist listeners of CHOI, and those disgusted by the views it propagates.

The debate over CHOI is not limited to the issue of freedom of expression versus dissemination of hate. Ultimately, the CRTC condemned CHOI for its failure to meet journalistic criteria of objectivity, accuracy and factual portrayal of issues.

The irony is that the CRTC has itself failed to address the real issues of journalistic autonomy and independence in Canada: concentration of media ownership, and media convergence. It is as if acting against CHOI, the CRTC was making a diversionary move, designed to show itself as the defender of the public interest it has been neglecting for years.

Serious journalistic criteria include fairness, and responsibility. CHOI fails badly to meet them, and deserves to be condemned for its practices and performances. But when it comes to covering the major issues facing our world, the major media outlets in Canada fail badly as well. Canwest Global, and the Bell-CTV-Globe conglomerate routinely make a mockery of fairness and journalistic responsibility by their lack of informed coverage of issues such as climate change, water privatization, food security, international finance and the media itself.

The substitution of right wing provocation for informed comment on the editorial page is only a minor failing compared to the inability of the major Canadian media to provide serious coverage of world affairs beginning with the waste of human life caused by mistaken priorities in public spending, notably on the military.

Canwest papers and The Globe and Mail cover Canada as if it were the United States. There are no labour reporters and union matters are discussed hardly ever, except for the odd piece explaining how Wal-Mart stays union free in the U.S. Yet, Canada has about 10 million people living in union families. Social democracy is treated as if it were a foreign disease, not the dominant political philosophy of Western Europe, with strong roots in Canada.

The two main staples of the Canadian media are Wall Street and Hollywood. But you would not know from the coverage how Wall Street actually works, or that, consistently, the good films made in the world today are not from California-based companies.

While we await the decision of the Federal Court of Appeal on CHOI, the minority Parliament should address the issue of how to regulate media in Canada. It is time to revisit the mandate and the structure of the CRTC. It is not enough to have them continue carrying on with their daily chores; we need to know more about how the public interest can best be served in broadcasting, telecommunications and journalism.

CHOI-FM was condemned for failing to meet standards of decency in its role as a content provider, but the corporate media are failing Canadian society in general.

Duncan Cameron

Duncan Cameron

Born in Victoria B.C. in 1944, Duncan now lives in Vancouver. Following graduation from the University of Alberta he joined the Department of Finance (Ottawa) in 1966 and was financial advisor to the...