Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera has received CRTC approval to broadcast in Canada.
But the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission in Ottawa turned down an application to offer Italy's RAI International to Canadians as a digital specialty service.
In a written decision, the CRTC said that it has decided that distributors must record Al-Jazeera programming and keep the recordings for a specific length of time in order to ensure that the content is not overly harmful to viewers.
"This measure will enable the commission and licensees of BDUs [broadcasting distribution undertakings] to verify and assess the context of the programming in the event of any future concerns about abusive comment on Al-Jazeera's programming."
The CRTC said it will require that distributors not distribute anything that could be considered "abuse comment."
It will allow distributors to "alter or delete" Al-Jazeera programming to ensure that no abusive comment is distributed, the CRTC said, while at the same time striving to have minimal impact on freedom of expression.
Al-Jazeera broadcasts 24 hours a day from Qatar on the Persian Gulf. The network regularly receives video and audio tapes said to have come from al-Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden and other prominent terrorists in the Middle East.
Jewish groups in particular were concerned about what they saw as anti-Semitic commentary on the 24-hour news network based in Qatar on the Persian Gulf.
Charles Dalfen, chairman of the CRTC, agreed in an interview with Canadian Press that Al-Jazeera has broadcast objectionable material.
Some of the remarks cited at commission hearings clearly held Jews up to "hatred and contempt on the basis of religion," said Mr. Dalfen.
On the other hand, he said, Al-Jazeera met the test of being a credible news service, and the commission had a legal duty not to unduly infringe freedom of expression.
The conclusion was that "we couldn't absolutely ban it," said Mr. Dalfen.
The decision took more than a year for the CRTC to make. Organizations launched vigorous campaigns for and against specific elements of the application.
In the spring of 2003, the Canadian Cable Television Association, including powerful Rogers Cable, asked the CRTC to permit its members to carry, as a digital subscription channel, Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based network often referred to as "the CNN of the Arab world," along with 10 other "ethnic services" from around the world, including RAI International.
The CCTA omnibus application was motivated in large part by the growth of "grey-market technologies" in Canada, in which increasing numbers of people were accessing channels such as Al-Jazeera illegally, rather than through such CRTC-approved direct-to-home satellite services, such as Bell ExpressVu and StarChoice.
The Al-Jazeera application received considerable support from many of the 500,000 Canadians of Arabic and west Asian origin. The Canadian Jewish Congress, among others, argued, however, that the eight-year-old network, which transmits from Qatar, disseminates "anti-Semitic hate speech."
The RAI application launched a squabble in the Italian-Canadian community, which for 21 years has been receiving as much as 50 hours of RAI programming a week via Telelatino (TLN), the Toronto-based Canadian cable operation owned by Corus Entertainment.
Last year, RAI International decided it wanted to beam its programming directly to Canadians as a 24-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week digital channel. More than 100,000 people in the Italian-Canadian community signed petitions favouring the application.
TLN objected to the application, not least because it feared a loss of audience and revenue. Moreover, RAI's plan threw over a deal signed between Italy's RAI and TLN in 2000, and approved by the CRTC in 2001, that called for the creation of a specialty service called RAI Canada, that was expected to carry 85 per cent RAI International programming.
With reports from James Adams and Canadian Press
