Broadcasting lies
February 18, 2026 1:38 PM
Part of what makes living in Canada so great is that we have the ability to fight ignorance and make ourselves aware. We can turn on our televisions, open our laptops or pick up a newspaper and instantly know what is happening on the other side of town and on the other side of the world.
While we can never be 100 per cent sure that what we are reading or watching is unbiased and truthful, we expect and trust our media outlets to do their best to ensure that they are communicating the facts.
So what happens when the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s broadcasting regulator, includes an ambiguous statement in changes to its regulations that seems to permit false news?
Well, we start to worry.
According to the CRTC website, the change reads, “a licensee shall not broadcast news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.”
It formerly read, “a licensee shall not broadcast any false or misleading news.”
The movement from this former statement to the new one seems an awful lot like a regression. The regulation is now vague, easily misread and leaves room for a news provider to claim that they simply did not know particular information was false.
Also, do the two parts of the statement have to go together? If a licensee knows the news they are broadcasting is false, but it does not endanger the lives, health or safety of the public, can they report it?
With media outlets like Fox News right across the border manipulating facts for what can only be assumed is “entertainment value”, it is absolutely not in Canada’s best interest to be leaving room for error in such a regulation.
The CRTC’s mandate, according to its website, is “to ensure that both the broadcasting and telecommunications systems serve the Canadian public.”
This means that it is the job of the CRTC to protect our right to be informed through regulating those that are faced with the task of informing us. But how can we trust those who are informing us when it appears that they can work around telling us the facts if fiction is simply more interesting?
With more and more people reading or watching the news online, television news broadcasting is in trouble. Networks are itching for ratings, and it’s tough to picture one that would pass up airing a story that’s going to garner a million viewers, even if there is a little inaccuracy to it.
This is not to say that we can no longer trust all news broadcasters; working at a newspaper has taught me that it’s very difficult to violate one’s journalistic integrity.
Beyond matters of policy, it is important to note that the journalists themselves should be opposed to such changes. What we publish, or air on news channels is our metaphorical baby.
Journalists often put significant efforts into assuring that the information they disseminate is not false or misleading, and many editors trouble themselves over seemingly unimportant wording or images for just this reason.
The new wording seems to discredit this part of the job making it seem like as long as you “put in some work” you’re covered. At this point, the information provided by the journalist is really no better than that provided by a quick and dirty Google search.
CRTC, perhaps you have just sped up the biological clock on broadcast media’s life.
