Canadian Broadcast Standards Council Ontario Regional Council
CANADIAN BROADCAST STANDARDS COUNCIL ONTARIO REGIONAL COUNCIL CFRA-AM re the Mark Sutcliffe and Lowell Green Shows (CBSC Decisions 9697-0083, 0084 and 0085) Decided May 7, 1997 A. MacKay (Chair), R. Stanbury (Vice-Chair), R. Cohen (ad hoc), P. Fockler, M. Hogarth, M. Ziniak THE FACTS On January 1, 1997, the Ottawa police shot Mr. Francis Nicholls, a member of the black community, in his Ottawa apartment. On the following morning, Mark Sutcliffe, sitting in for the regular early morning (6:00-9:00 a.m.) host, Steve Madely, on CFRA-AM (Ottawa), dealt with issues relating to the shooting; he continued on the subject on the early morning show of January 3. Lowell Green, the host of the mid-morning (9:00 a.m.-12 noon) show, did not raise the subject on his show of January 2 but did deal with it at length on the show of January 3. Since the complainant raised issues of a substantially similar nature regarding the three shows of hosts Sutcliffe and Green which dealt with the shooting, the CBSC considers it appropriate to address the complaints in a single decision. There are so many excerpts from the various shows which bear some relevance to the issues raised in the complainant’s letter that the Council believes that the most useful way of presenting these is in Appendices to this decision, with only brief excerpts in the body of the decision. To do otherwise would result in an otherwise unavoidably confused presentation of the facts. That being said, the Council is of the view that having the lengthier excerpts available to those who wish to review this matter in detail will at least permit them to have all of the relevant material at hand.
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