CRTC Opens Consultation To Ban Fox News From Canadian Airwaves
Following a complaint about incendiary comments made about LGBTQ2 people on the right-wing American network, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has launched a public consultation on whether to ban Fox News from Canadian airwaves.
The notice was placed on the broadcast regulator’s website on Wednesday, and it is seeking opinions from interested parties and the general public until June 2.
In an April 4 open letter, Egale Canada, a Toronto-based LGBTQ2 advocacy group, encouraged the CRTC to hold the consultation, citing “false and horrifying claims” about transgender persons made by then-host Tucker Carlson during a March 28 show.
“This programming is in clear violation of Canadian broadcasting standards and has no place on Canadian broadcasting networks,” Egale’s executive director Helen Kennedy wrote.
Carlson was fired from Fox News last week, but a spokeswoman for Egale told Global News that the network remained “committed to the call” to remove the station from Canadian airwaves, citing anti-LGBTQ2 sentiments from other network guests.
“The issue of Fox News inciting hate, violence, and discrimination in its programming extends beyond one individual,” a spokesperson for the group said in a statement.
The episode in question, which is still available online despite Carlson’s firing, aired the day after a mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school that murdered three nine-year-old children and three adults. Police shot and killed the shooter, who was initially identified as a woman and subsequently as a transgender man who was a previous student at The Covenant School.
“During the segment, Carlson made the inflammatory and false claim that trans people are ‘targeting’ Christians. To position trans people in existential opposition to Christianity is an incitement of violence against trans people that is plain to any viewer,” Egale said in the open letter to the CRTC. “Lies and hateful propaganda are not news programming.”
Carlson, who has a long history of anti-trans rhetoric, warned about the perils of transgender “ideology” while downplaying the threats trans people experience and claimed they had social, economic, and educational advantages in the United States.
Carlson highlighted an open letter written by Egale the same day as the show in question, which was unrelated to the previous day’s incident. According to the open letter, there has been “an unprecedented and exponential rise in anti-2SLGBTQI, hate-fueled, and gender-critical movements” around the world.
“This is a lie,” Carlson told his viewers.
The conservative host’s sudden departure from Fox News comes after the media company settled a lawsuit put forth by Dominion Voting Systems, costing Fox $787.5 million in what appears to be one of the highest in U.S. defamation case history.
The CRTC will hold a consultation to determine whether Fox News should be removed off the broadcast regulator’s list of non-Canadian television providers approved for distribution in Canada.
Stations and services on that list do not require a CRTC licence to operate in Canada in the same way that Canadian broadcast services do, and hence are not subject to the same laws that Canadian broadcast services must obey. These laws prohibit the dissemination of abusive comments or images that may incite “hatred or contempt” toward persons or groups based on their gender, sexual orientation, or other characteristics.
Egale, on the other hand, points out that the CRTC has already proved that it holds non-Canadian services to the same standard.
Since the consultation began on Wednesday, two responses have been received from Canadians who oppose the removal of Fox News. Both statements highlighted Carlson’s departure from the network, with one adding that the remarks were Carlson’s own and “were not presented as news.”
That intervener claimed that removing the channel would violate Canada’s free speech protections, as viewers have the right to choose what they want to watch and agree with.
“If we don’t agree with certain opinions, there are several actions that we as individuals can take,” it said. “We can change the channel or station or turn the tv or radio off or unsubscribe from the tv channel. A dangerous precedent will be set by allowing a special interest group to dictate what we can and cannot watch or listen to.”
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the CRTC banned the distribution of Russian state broadcaster Russia Today, stating that non-Canadian services can be removed from the list if “the content… is at odds with the standard to which the Commission would hold a Canadian programming service” and would thus violate the CRTC’s rules if licensed.
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