Reply #32: so does Canada ...

[iverglas]

The conditions placed on the licence really are NOT censorship.

It's arguable that, in practice, they may lead to Al-Jazeera not being aired in Canada. But hey ... that will be a business decision by the companies authorized to distribute it. I'm being mainly facetious, in case anyone isn't sure. But there really is a distinction between censorship and scrutiny.

... if this reasoning is valid for Al Jazeera, it ought to be valid for all the other networks too.

The reasoning in the case of Al-Jazeera is obviously twofold:

- there is very little opportunity for broad public scrutiny of its programming as it airs, because very few members of the public speak Arabic. If Al-Jazeera were being broadcast in English, there would be no justification for the recording condition;

- there is prima facie evidence of programming on Al-Jazeera in the past that arguably offends the provisions of the Broadcasting Act, and therefore there is justification for imposing conditions that make scrutiny possible.

I actually agree with you when it comes to some other things, like programming on Vision TV. Some of the fundie religious shit I've seen on there (and probably more so on paid religious programming on networks like CanWest Global), in English, strikes me as hardly compatible with Canadian values of equality and diversity and tolerance. But then, if I think I have grounds for complaint, I can make one.

The problem is more with Vision's multilingual religious programming; I, and most Canadians, have no way of knowing what's being said. But in the case of Vision and any other multilingual broadcaster in Canada, the broadcaster is Canadian and thus arguably more likely to consider and adhere to Canadian standards, being part of this society and being amenable to more severe sanction (the loss of its only audience) if it violates those standards and therefore more likely to be deterred by the threat of licence revocation.