How is that not a clear-cut first amendment violation?
The government literally banning what speech can reach it's citizens. To be fair, it's not really a surprise. The government decided at one point to suspend the constitution (because that's a thing over there?) during peaceful protests by truckers...
They should bar Fox News from using the "entertainment" loophole, and apply news regulations to them.
"News regulations" should include all the stuff the comment you replied to listed, for everyone (as they used to, at least in the US). Ideally, they'd also include a few more good ideas the US used to enforce: Limits on market share, and bans against foreign ownership.
It'd be a reasonable guess that more people will hear about this on Joe Rogan's podcast than on Fox News. If Tucker Carlson starts a podcast it is plausible more people will be deciding their opinions based on what he says than based on what Fox News says.
We are fortunate to live in an era when groups like the CRTC are incapable of silencing opinions that they disagree with. Still distasteful though.
Fox news just settled a defamation case for over $700 million. At some point, you can't call what's being broadcast an "opinion." Clearly Fox agrees what they're broadcasting isn't an opinion and is instead a falsehood, because otherwise they would have argued their case.
We should note that they settled against Dominion Voting Systems which is one of the weakest points in the entire US democratic apparatus. There is a strong argument that DVS shouldn't have a market to sell to and that voting should be done entirely with pen and paper. Tracking whether their voting machines are secure and appropriately tamper-resistant is too hard and the use of electronic voting undermines confidence in the vote.
So while lying about what is happening is supremely unhelpful; this is an area where the freest of free speech standards should be applied. Cracks in the technical foundations of how votes are tallied are extremely dangerous and all scrutiny should be invited. Voting processes should be held to an extremely high standard of transparency.
My preferred outcome here is that Dominion gets its 700 billion from Fox News in settlement for all the lies then closes its doors and ceases trading.
> We are fortunate to live in an era when groups like the CRTC are incapable of silencing opinions that they disagree with. Still distasteful though.
I'd recommend reading the article.
> The CRTC has opened a public consultation on a complaint from an LGBTQ rights group asking the broadcast regulator to ban Fox News from cable packages in Canada.
Someone made a complaint, CRTC is following up. That's all.
"trans people are targeting christians" is not an opinion. It is stating something as a fact (I highly doubt it's true, but it's still stated as a fact).
Canadians are too apathetic to care. It's one of those "they came for X but I wasn't one so I didn't care" situations up here. It's going to get way worse before it gets better.
Yes and unfortunately, courts have already ruled that the CRTC had the right to shutdown radio stations because of insults and swear words[0]. So it wouldn't surprise me if they had the authority to ban Fox News.
This latest proposed ban is significantly more serious than the CHOI-FM dispute, in the sense that they're now considering banning an entire channel because of a complaint that one particular program on that channel was allegedly in violation of particular norms. At least with CHOI-FM the alleged offending content was peppered throughout the day.
(I'm not saying either move is a sign of a healthy society, but this latest proposed ban is a step beyond. It's basically communicating to channel operators that absolutely all of their content has to fall in line, or they risk an end to their business. It doesn't even matter if the CRTC ultimately decides not to impose a ban here -- there is now a content-based sword of damocles over every channel.)
There wouldn't be much point of a radio & television regulator that didn't have the ability to in theory shut down radio or television stations violating canadian law. Like that is basically the definition of what a regulator is.
Serious answer: there isn't a point anymore. I understand the relevance in a past model of spectrum allocation for channels, where there was both a will and a possiblity of controlling who got a broadcast slot. That ship has sailed - spectrum still needs to be regulated, but it's no longer relevant to "allowing" content.
Crtc should be no more able to ban Fox than, say porn.
The CRTC did order CHOI-FM to be shut down, and they lost the lawsuit and all appeals, so they would have been shut down. But at the last minute they were bought by another channel with a different CRTC licence, which saved them from the shutdown order.
I understand. My point was they shut it down because they used "bad words" and insults, not because they violated Canadian law. The idea that the CRTC only shuts down stations that are violating Canadian law is not true.
By the way, I used to listen to that radio station and it was pretty mild compared to what you often hear on American talk shows. They were occasionally disrespectful towards some celebrities and politicians, but that's it. It's clear to me that they were unfairly targeted for being the only libertarian-leaning radio station in the province. 50,000 people marched in Quebec city to contest the decision, the largest such march since the 1960s.
In 2015 this would be shocking but in 2023 it's not that surprising as government media control ramps up around the world.
There is no longer any tolerance for anything but a narrow slice of views an opinions to be available to people.
What's worse is that I generally agree with all the views of mainstream western media it still pisses me off that it seems to be biased in agreement with me... Unless I'm now part of the sheeple?
>Carlson literally disputed the results of an election, and that despite heaps of evidence that there never has been fraud
There's plenty of evidence of some fraud occuring, it was just never discussed by the regime-aligned media and tech companies, which is the vast majority of them. The same way they conspired to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop story, and claimed in unison that the covid vaccines could prevent transmission
and infection when there was no evidence to support this.
>At that point, he and his gullible viewers become a threat to democracy itself
If all your sources of truth are partisan media outlets aligned with you regime, then if the fraud really was large enough to alter the election results, you'd never know. That's the real threat to democracy.
> There's plenty of evidence of some fraud occuring, it was just never discussed by the regime-aligned media and tech companies
HN does not need people repeating long-debunked lies, especially when you’re not even willing to put your personal credibility on the line by stating what specifically you assert to be true and why.
> Carlson literally disputed the results of an election
> It used to be the case that such events got classified and prosecuted as high treason.
I wasn't aware that stating an opinion on a government election was illegal in the United States. Isn't that literally what the First Amendment is for?
“I don’t think Biden should have won” is an opinion.
“Biden conspired with Dominion to tamper with votes” is a statement which can be assessed factually, and which has significant impact. Carlson and others knowingly lied like that – hence the first massive lawsuit settlement – and the J6 insurgents show every sign of having believed those lies and being motivated by them to assault the legitimate government trying to prevent a fair election result.
The First Amendment is not absolute and has long-standing exceptions. One of those are false statements about specific people, which Carlson clearly made knowing they were false before he made them, and another is incitement to violence. The bar for that is high but it seems likely that at least some of these calls are debatably close to that level.
It’s also worth remembering that the first amendment isn’t relevant to what a Canadian regulator allows to be broadcast in Canada.
My understanding is that Dominion (and Smartmatic) are private companies so they're not bound by the First Amendment and are free to file defamation lawsuits.
My criticism of the parent poster was with the phrase "high treason" which implies a crime against the government (who would be bound by the First Amendment if this was taking place in America).
There was no outrage then because in 2000 there was actuallyevidence. That's why the court cases actually were heard by the courts instead of being quickly dismissed. Compare to 2020 when all the cases were quickly dismissed because no one could find any actual evidence.
Pretending that the horseshit in florida is even remotely comparable to all the nonsense conservatives made up to pretend their golden god was super popular is insane. The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks_Brothers_riot is well documented and pretty clear, while Republicans in 2020 claimed things like foreign agents changing votes in a database using a satellite, and pushed forward claims WE HAVE DIRECT EVIDENCE THEY KNEW WERE FALSE.
Show me the time democrats in 2016 file tens of completely valueless court cases that all got thrown out for a complete lack of evidence. We have Trump himself on a call pressuring a government official to "find" more votes.
Kindly explain how, misguided as they might have been, proceeding through the legal system is somehow more pernicious to democracy than paying lip service to riots and participating in a campaign where the outcome of an election is flat-out denied and retroactively justified by "foreign interference"?
> Kindly explain how, misguided as they might have been, proceeding through the legal system is somehow more pernicious to democracy than paying lip service to riots and participating in a campaign where the outcome of an election is flat-out denied and retroactively justified by "foreign interference"?
I think you're using too many SAT words, and not enough sentence structuring.
I believe the responder is saying "the 2016 election was less 'pernicious' to democracy than the 2020 election." But to be honest, it's impossible for me to tell which election you think had which results from this sentence.
EDIT: Please note that working within the constraints of the system will always be less pernicious to the system than working outside of the constraints of the system.
My sentence structure is fine, as is my word choice.
The parent to my original comment talked about how evil it was to question the integrity of an election, and I snidely brought up how it wasn't considered a problem until Trump did it. mrguyorama's response was to suggest that Trump sympathizers filing legal cases on questionable or nonexistence evidence justified the decidedly anti-democratic response to his election. So, I facetiously asked how they think democratic measures justify the anti-democratic action they claim to abhor.
> There is no longer any tolerance for anything but a narrow slice of views an opinions to be available to people.
I get that you're soap-boxing, but...
"trans people are targeting Christians" isn't a viewpoint. It's a statement of fact that may be false or true. In the context used (a vile statement by a trashy fear monger), it seems to be an intentional statement, and further one designed to incite hatred over a lie.
Fox News just banned itself by getting rid of Carlson. He was their most popular host by far, and the rest of their popular evening lineup depended on his lead in.
Fox News just banned itself by getting rid of O'Reilly. He was their most popular host by far, and the rest of their popular evening lineup depended on his lead in.
Fox doesn't have the same bench it did. There is no one with the credibility and charisma of Carlson left. When O'Reilly left they still had some talent.
On what planet did Tucker Carlson ever have a shred of credibility or charisma?
The man was such a joke that it took Jon Stewart all of about 5 minutes to get him deleted from Crossfire.
That job has two requirement: the ability to look directly into the camera and lie, and the ability to keep the elderly afraid of non-white and non-binary people. If you can do that, congratulations, you can have that job.
> “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.”
Interestingly, religious beliefs are a defense for "inciting or promoting hatred" in Canada[0]: "in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;"
That doesn't sound like a religious opinion to me. Like its not based in the bible or anything. I don't think just because an opinion involves a religious group it counts as a religious opinion.
As an example, the most obvious example of hate speech would be nazi stuff about jews being evil. They don't get a pass because they are making an opinion about a religious group.
That's related but a qualitatively different thing from the quoted claim.
He's not saying he hates trans people because he's christian, which would be protected I guess maybe. He's saying trans people hate christians because they are trans. These don't seem that similar to me but I also understand how they could be confused.
I also agree with the assessment that the first one is personally shitty but the second is an incitement to violence.
Headline seems kind of misleading. Someone filed a complaint and CRTC is going through the process of handling the complaint. Its not like crtc just initiated these proceedings on their own.
"Considering" might be a bit strong. All that's really happening is the CRTC is opening a public consultation in response to a formal complaint. A cursory look at the CRTC's website shows quite a few public proceedings that are open to comment [0], including the one from the featured article.
I'm inclined to believe this is an example of the system working as intended. A complaint was filed and now the public has their opportunity to voice their opinions in response.
I would agree CRTC complaints are like lawsuits, anyone can file one. However, there is some risk that this is a trial balloon for more restrictive policies, and publicizing it like this is consistent with a playbook this government has been using. Fox is mostly harmless, and a good canary for what's going on up here. The whole picture is far too pessimistic for most people to even consider.
One can be simultaneously supportive of the freedoms of LGBT people and against the malefactors who have co-opted this and other legitimate popular movements for some very insideous ends. The primary need of these actors behind the movements is for the majority of people to do nothing. It's called neutralization - where they don't have to actually defeat you if you don't resist. Bizarre behavior, extreme statements, disproportionate aggression over seemingly minor transgressons are all designed to cow people into not confronting their representatives or the activists who operate on their behalf.
The reason they're going after Fox is because their commentators embolden viewers to become disagreeable to official narratives. In Canada, Fox News represents dissent, and dissent represents both hope and belief that can create resistance to the revolutionaries who have seized our institutions while we were being polite and civil. I've been watching the canaries pile up for years, but maybe this one will be the one that alerts the people in the cave.
It's called astroturfing, and it's standard PR and party politics. The idea that a mainstream newspaper, which is beholden to advertisers and granting agencies could be dismissed as "right wing," is ridiculous. You may in fact believe the National Post is edgy, and that a literal newspaper is still capable of offending delicate sensibilities, but I can't accept that view as worthy, serious, or normal.
I think you misinterpreted my comment. Calling the National Post "ring wing" is not some kind of slur. I would similarly call the Toronto Star "left wing". They all have their leanings, that's all.
This is kind of an interesting misalignment, where typically one would use conservative vs. progressive, whereas the -wing generally implies a specific critical viewpoint predicated on polarization.
Pithy remarks aside, the actual value has to be enough to convince the plaintiff to drop the case and low enough to convince the defendant that's it's cheaper than a trial.
Like any true compromise, it's probably an amount that made both sides unhappy, so I'd estimate about half the requested 800m.
Funny thing is that CNN is creating these TV channels in Europe the past couple of years. Here they are following the quasi-extremist line that better suits the opposition of the parties in power in the country in order to get popular engagement.
i.e.: In Portugal, a left wing party (they call themselves Socialist Party, but most are just moderate left) is in power, so CNN Portugal, to get views from running the contradictory viewpoint, most of the time is a quasi alt-right mouthpiece.
Yeah CNN international version (I can comment on the Asian versions) is completely different than CNN in America. It feels less polarizing and less of a mirror copy of Fox.
The website for which couldn't be bothered with even basic accessibility requirements. None of which are difficult.
The statement in question is also not entirely inaccurate. My entire friend group is LGBTQIA2+ and consistently makes comments against Christianity that would satisfy Carlson's statement. Frankly however, a lot of Christian's deserve it and the LGBTQIA2S+ community has been the target by a large sum of Christian's for long enough to warrant such a view in my opinion.
With all of that being said, and with understanding of what the article is about, the CRTC should not be doing this. It doesn't serve anyone in the long run except some extremely well off, probably straight, probably white, and probably lifelong male persons. As well as the group. The same group that doesn't care about other disadvantaged people enough to comply with simple legislation enabling technology to assist those with differing ability to read and navigate the web.
Tucker isnt even with Fox news anymore, but this isn't the point.
For those not following Canadian politics. Bill C-11 recently became law and they are combining this with our lack of free speech.
>The group said the Fox News “coverage aimed to provoke hatred and violence against 2SLGBTQI communities, particularly those who are Two Spirit, trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming (2STNBGN).”
This is about censorship. You claim your political opponents are 'inciting hatred' toward yourself or others and the government has the ability to censor your shared political opponents.
I will be shocked if they don't completely ban Fox news from Canada.
78 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 148 ms ] threadThe government literally banning what speech can reach it's citizens. To be fair, it's not really a surprise. The government decided at one point to suspend the constitution (because that's a thing over there?) during peaceful protests by truckers...
Canada has many reasonable regulatory alternatives including:
- condition libel protection to retractions made with the same prominence if fox is made aware of falsity
- create individual liability for libel in addition to corporate
- require public broadcast messages on certain topics
- require a fairness doctrine on certain topics
This recent complaint came from Tucker's weird Canada is under a dictatorship documentary.
Given he spread blatantly false and harmful information, the CRTC is forced to review the complaint. People need to read beyond the headlines.
This is the regulatory framework at work.
"News regulations" should include all the stuff the comment you replied to listed, for everyone (as they used to, at least in the US). Ideally, they'd also include a few more good ideas the US used to enforce: Limits on market share, and bans against foreign ownership.
We are fortunate to live in an era when groups like the CRTC are incapable of silencing opinions that they disagree with. Still distasteful though.
So while lying about what is happening is supremely unhelpful; this is an area where the freest of free speech standards should be applied. Cracks in the technical foundations of how votes are tallied are extremely dangerous and all scrutiny should be invited. Voting processes should be held to an extremely high standard of transparency.
My preferred outcome here is that Dominion gets its 700 billion from Fox News in settlement for all the lies then closes its doors and ceases trading.
But by god it was a fun show to watch!
I'd recommend reading the article.
> The CRTC has opened a public consultation on a complaint from an LGBTQ rights group asking the broadcast regulator to ban Fox News from cable packages in Canada.
Someone made a complaint, CRTC is following up. That's all.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHOI-FM#Dispute_with_the_CRTC
(I'm not saying either move is a sign of a healthy society, but this latest proposed ban is a step beyond. It's basically communicating to channel operators that absolutely all of their content has to fall in line, or they risk an end to their business. It doesn't even matter if the CRTC ultimately decides not to impose a ban here -- there is now a content-based sword of damocles over every channel.)
Crtc should be no more able to ban Fox than, say porn.
By the way, I used to listen to that radio station and it was pretty mild compared to what you often hear on American talk shows. They were occasionally disrespectful towards some celebrities and politicians, but that's it. It's clear to me that they were unfairly targeted for being the only libertarian-leaning radio station in the province. 50,000 people marched in Quebec city to contest the decision, the largest such march since the 1960s.
Whether you describe the issue as "bad words" or failing to obtain a broadcast license due to non compliance, is just semantics
There is no longer any tolerance for anything but a narrow slice of views an opinions to be available to people.
What's worse is that I generally agree with all the views of mainstream western media it still pisses me off that it seems to be biased in agreement with me... Unless I'm now part of the sheeple?
Carlson literally disputed the results of an election, and that despite heaps of evidence that there never has been fraud.
At that point, he and his gullible viewers become a threat to democracy itself - and that is not an exaggeration given the events of Jan 6th.
It used to be the case that such events got classified and prosecuted as high treason.
There's plenty of evidence of some fraud occuring, it was just never discussed by the regime-aligned media and tech companies, which is the vast majority of them. The same way they conspired to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop story, and claimed in unison that the covid vaccines could prevent transmission and infection when there was no evidence to support this.
>At that point, he and his gullible viewers become a threat to democracy itself
If all your sources of truth are partisan media outlets aligned with you regime, then if the fraud really was large enough to alter the election results, you'd never know. That's the real threat to democracy.
HN does not need people repeating long-debunked lies, especially when you’re not even willing to put your personal credibility on the line by stating what specifically you assert to be true and why.
> It used to be the case that such events got classified and prosecuted as high treason.
I wasn't aware that stating an opinion on a government election was illegal in the United States. Isn't that literally what the First Amendment is for?
“Biden conspired with Dominion to tamper with votes” is a statement which can be assessed factually, and which has significant impact. Carlson and others knowingly lied like that – hence the first massive lawsuit settlement – and the J6 insurgents show every sign of having believed those lies and being motivated by them to assault the legitimate government trying to prevent a fair election result.
The First Amendment is not absolute and has long-standing exceptions. One of those are false statements about specific people, which Carlson clearly made knowing they were false before he made them, and another is incitement to violence. The bar for that is high but it seems likely that at least some of these calls are debatably close to that level.
It’s also worth remembering that the first amendment isn’t relevant to what a Canadian regulator allows to be broadcast in Canada.
My criticism of the parent poster was with the phrase "high treason" which implies a crime against the government (who would be bound by the First Amendment if this was taking place in America).
There was no outrage then. It’s just become acceptable to despise and ostracize the Right.
that was a pretty popular thing to do, circa 2000
> that is not an exaggeration
not something normally included in non-exaggerations.
I think you're using too many SAT words, and not enough sentence structuring.
I believe the responder is saying "the 2016 election was less 'pernicious' to democracy than the 2020 election." But to be honest, it's impossible for me to tell which election you think had which results from this sentence.
EDIT: Please note that working within the constraints of the system will always be less pernicious to the system than working outside of the constraints of the system.
The parent to my original comment talked about how evil it was to question the integrity of an election, and I snidely brought up how it wasn't considered a problem until Trump did it. mrguyorama's response was to suggest that Trump sympathizers filing legal cases on questionable or nonexistence evidence justified the decidedly anti-democratic response to his election. So, I facetiously asked how they think democratic measures justify the anti-democratic action they claim to abhor.
I get that you're soap-boxing, but...
"trans people are targeting Christians" isn't a viewpoint. It's a statement of fact that may be false or true. In the context used (a vile statement by a trashy fear monger), it seems to be an intentional statement, and further one designed to incite hatred over a lie.
They're going to cellar to CNN.
They're going to cellar to CNN.
-- someone else, 6 years ago
The man was such a joke that it took Jon Stewart all of about 5 minutes to get him deleted from Crossfire.
That job has two requirement: the ability to look directly into the camera and lie, and the ability to keep the elderly afraid of non-white and non-binary people. If you can do that, congratulations, you can have that job.
Interestingly, religious beliefs are a defense for "inciting or promoting hatred" in Canada[0]: "in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text;"
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_in_Canada#Sec...
As an example, the most obvious example of hate speech would be nazi stuff about jews being evil. They don't get a pass because they are making an opinion about a religious group.
He's not saying he hates trans people because he's christian, which would be protected I guess maybe. He's saying trans people hate christians because they are trans. These don't seem that similar to me but I also understand how they could be confused.
I also agree with the assessment that the first one is personally shitty but the second is an incitement to violence.
I'm inclined to believe this is an example of the system working as intended. A complaint was filed and now the public has their opportunity to voice their opinions in response.
[0] https://applications.crtc.gc.ca/instances-proceedings/Defaul...
One can be simultaneously supportive of the freedoms of LGBT people and against the malefactors who have co-opted this and other legitimate popular movements for some very insideous ends. The primary need of these actors behind the movements is for the majority of people to do nothing. It's called neutralization - where they don't have to actually defeat you if you don't resist. Bizarre behavior, extreme statements, disproportionate aggression over seemingly minor transgressons are all designed to cow people into not confronting their representatives or the activists who operate on their behalf.
The reason they're going after Fox is because their commentators embolden viewers to become disagreeable to official narratives. In Canada, Fox News represents dissent, and dissent represents both hope and belief that can create resistance to the revolutionaries who have seized our institutions while we were being polite and civil. I've been watching the canaries pile up for years, but maybe this one will be the one that alerts the people in the cave.
But it's not the government "publicizing it like this", it the National Post, probably the most right wing newspaper in Canada.
Wasn't there an organization for standards in journalism? or can anyone start up a news org now and start reporting stuff?
Like any true compromise, it's probably an amount that made both sides unhappy, so I'd estimate about half the requested 800m.
If you think cnn is deserving of a complaint, you can file one about them too.
i.e.: In Portugal, a left wing party (they call themselves Socialist Party, but most are just moderate left) is in power, so CNN Portugal, to get views from running the contradictory viewpoint, most of the time is a quasi alt-right mouthpiece.
The website for which couldn't be bothered with even basic accessibility requirements. None of which are difficult.
The statement in question is also not entirely inaccurate. My entire friend group is LGBTQIA2+ and consistently makes comments against Christianity that would satisfy Carlson's statement. Frankly however, a lot of Christian's deserve it and the LGBTQIA2S+ community has been the target by a large sum of Christian's for long enough to warrant such a view in my opinion.
With all of that being said, and with understanding of what the article is about, the CRTC should not be doing this. It doesn't serve anyone in the long run except some extremely well off, probably straight, probably white, and probably lifelong male persons. As well as the group. The same group that doesn't care about other disadvantaged people enough to comply with simple legislation enabling technology to assist those with differing ability to read and navigate the web.
For those not following Canadian politics. Bill C-11 recently became law and they are combining this with our lack of free speech.
>The group said the Fox News “coverage aimed to provoke hatred and violence against 2SLGBTQI communities, particularly those who are Two Spirit, trans, nonbinary and gender non-conforming (2STNBGN).”
This is about censorship. You claim your political opponents are 'inciting hatred' toward yourself or others and the government has the ability to censor your shared political opponents.
I will be shocked if they don't completely ban Fox news from Canada.