Talk this way
[National Post editorial]

LIKE other talk radio stations, Winnipeg's AM 1290 promotes itself as a marketplace for bold, controversial ideas. "Make your point!" reads the banner text on the radio station's Web site. The exhortation is accompanied by an image of a raised fist clenching a cellular phone.

In the interest of truth in advertising, however, AM 1290 might have to modify its Web page design. "Make your point!" the new banner will read ". . . providing that your point does not expose an individual or group to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability."

In fairness, credit for our proposed new wording must go to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. We lifted our catchy slogan idea almost directly from their regulations.

In fact, AM 1290 officials were scheduled to appear before the CRTC yesterday to address allegedly anti-gay comments made by its talk show hosts in 1998. But those hearings were cancelled. In what essentially amounted to a plea bargain (elicited under the shadow of CRTC's power to take away AM 1290's broadcasting licence), the station submitted a "code of ethics" prescribing a kinder, gentler, duller programming policy.

The code requires AM 1290 to screen its callers so that views expressed on matters of public concern be "balanced." To ensure a thoroughly bland dynamic between caller and host, the guide also requires that callers "must not be subjected to badgering, ridicule or insult." Worst of all, on-air comments are forbidden if they are of a character that might be interpreted to expose any individual or group to contempt on the basis of the factors listed in the anti-discrimination laundry list cited above.

Under this self-censorship program, controversial issues will likely be sidestepped in favour of inoffensive topics. And the listeners? Many will simply become part of the growing army of Canadians who are looking to the Internet for on-line broadcasts from more freewheeling U.S. radio stations. And public debate will shrink further into a bland hobby of the elite.

For their part, the CRTC will no doubt characterize AM 1290's new ethics code as a sort of voluntary restraint. But, of course, it was not voluntary at all. It was formulated under the threat of CRTC action, and Canadians should recognize that such intimidation is merely censorship in a different form.

A new harm is thus added to the long list of follies committed by the CRTC. When did it last do any good?