Racist comments posted in online media forums subject to Human Rights rules
Aboriginal leaders accuse CBC of allowing website readers to promote racism
February 11, 2009
WINNIPEG — The CBC has failed to police its website and has given racists a forum to spew hatred, Manitoba aboriginal leaders charged Wednesday.
The Southern Chiefs Organization distributed printouts of comments left by CBC website readers in response to stories on aboriginal issues in Manitoba, British Columbia and other provinces. Dozens of the comments suggested natives were drunks, criminals or incapable of supporting themselves.
"Those (comments) definitely have no place in the public domain," said Grand Chief Morris Swan-Shannacappo.
"The world will always have racists and kooks and people who just don't know what they're talking about. But the CBC ... has provided them with a forum they can use to attack our people."
Swan-Shannacappo said he has seen similar comments on other media websites which allow readers to post their thoughts, but his organization is singling out the CBC partly because it is federally funded and should be held to a high standard of accountability.
The broadcaster said all reader comments are pre-screened by a combination of in-house and third-party monitoring agents, but admitted some comments slip through the cracks.
"Because this is a subjective exercise, sometimes those things get through," CBC spokesman Jeff Keay said from Toronto.
The CBC website allows readers to report racist or other objectionable content that slips through for a second review.
Swan-Shannacappo admitted that many comments he objected to had been removed, but said the removals sometimes take hours because they rely on public input.
The corporation is looking at ways to improve monitoring of public comments, Keay said, including a possible temporary shutdown of public comments when discussions get heated.
"If the abusive stuff starts to pile up, it may make sense to discontinue it, to let things cool off," he said.
Many of the comments that have raised the ire of the southern chiefs have come in response to news stories about aboriginal crime or tragedy.
One reader comment regarding a Manitoba aboriginal leader charged with theft and fraud said aboriginals "just want to leech from society, sell cheap smokes and drink beer."
Another reader commenting on a story about a fatal house fire on the Chemainus First Nation in British Columbia suggested aboriginals "should go out into the real world and work for a roof over their heads like the rest of us."
The southern chiefs called on the Manitoba government to step in and force the CBC to improve its monitoring of reader comments.
Steve Ashton, Manitoba's acting attorney general, called the comments offensive and racist, but said there is little the province can do. Because the CBC is federally regulated, the chiefs organization should take its complaint to the federal human rights commission, the RCMP or the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, he said.
The complaints about the CBC could serve as a warning to other media outlets that allow readers to post their thoughts on the web, said a law professor at the University of Manitoba.
"If you've got control over what messages go up ... you can be held responsible," Karen Busby said.
Busby said website comments are comparable to letters to the editor that are printed by newspapers. She pointed to a 2002 letter published in the Red Deer Advocate in Alberta that suggested gays were as immoral as pedophiles, drug dealers and pimps.
Darren Lund, a high school teacher, complained to the Alberta Human Rights Commission and in a settlement, the newspaper agreed to ban letters that discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation.
The commission later ordered the writer of the letter, Stephen Boissoin of the Concerned Christian Coalition, to pay Lund $5,000 in damages. Boissoin is appealing that ruling.