Court backs CRTC in shutting down radio station

[The Cyber Menace]

The Federal Court of Appeal has rejected a Quebec radio station's attempt to overturn a regulator's decision not to renew its licence.

A three-judge panel said the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission acted within the rights given to it by Parliament when it denied CHOI-FM a licence renewal 13 months ago.

The CRTC's rightful exercise of that power, he added, "cannot be transformed into a crusade for freedom of expression without substantially distorting it.''

"The appeal has to do with a decision not to renew a privilege that had been granted to the appellant,'' it said.

Earlier this year, a Quebec court awarded $340,000 to Sophie Chiasson, a television weather presenter whom controversial morning man Jean-Francois Filion targeted for ridicule over her physical appearance and sex life.

Another CHOI host suggested psychiatric patients should be euthanized and that African students at Laval University are "the sons of plunderers, cannibals.''

Source: CTV News/Canadian Press

[The Cyber Menace]

Privilege of speech?

A court has upheld the CRTCs decision to revoke the license of Quebec radio station CHOI. What was the station's offense? They were offensive -- in their on-air comments, that is.

In upholding the decision, a judge referred to the station's access to the airwaves as a "privilege ", not a right.

Is this how freedom of speech is practiced in the True North strong and free?

http://cybermenace.blogspot.com/2005/09/pr...-of-speech.html

[mirror]

Good. I am delighted they have had their licence revoked.

Yes, actually it is how we practice freedom of speech in Canada, as we have societal norms.

What cave do you live in?

And you are probably the type to think it OK for the leader of the Western separatist party to say there never were atrocities committed against the Jews in Hitler's Germany.

Shall we add you to the revisionist historians list?

[The Cyber Menace]

Good. I am delighted they have had their licence revoked.

Yes, actually it is how we practice freedom of speech in Canada, as we have societal norms.

What cave do you live in?

And you are probably the type to think it OK for the leader of the Western separatist party to say there never were atrocities committed against the Jews in Hitler's Germany.

Shall we add you to the revisionist historians list?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

First, you're equating mockery of a weather woman to denial of the holocaust?

Second, my understanding of the concept of freedom of speech is this: if you don't like what somebody is saying, you

a ) ignore it

b ) laugh at it

c ) rebut it

The moment the government gets in the business of deciding what's offensive or hateful is the moment we enter the territory of censorship. You then have every single group in society lining up to sign up a new kind of speech as offensive or intolerable. That ain't free speech. That's Big Brother.

[mirror]

Your so called freedom of speech protestations have turned Toronto and other major cities into shooting galleries. Sure let's allow all the violence we can offer on TV. These are the consequences for what one says.

[The Cyber Menace]

Your so called freedom of speech protestations have turned Toronto and other major cities into shooting galleries. There are consequences for what one says.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I'm sorry, but you're going to have to explain that one to me.

[mirror]

It is quite simple really. We did not used to have the kind of violence we are now seeing in Toronto and other major urban areas. And we did not have the violence we now have on TV. Put two and two together. These are the result of your freedom of speech obsessions!

[The Cyber Menace]

It is quite simple really. We did not used to have the kind of violence we are now seeing in Toronto and other major urban areas. And we did not have the violence we now have on TV. Put two and two together. These are the result of your freedom of speech obsessions!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

1) You're blaming Toronto gun deaths on The Fear Factor?

2) You're obvioulsy a fan of censorship, not a big fan of the freedoms enshrined in the Charter, or most documents of freedom around the world.