Regulating TV Violence: An Analysis of the Voluntary Code Regarding Violence in Television Programming

PAUL HORWITZ

ABSTRACT

The problem of television violence has once again become a focus of public and government concern. Responding to the threat of regulation by the CRTC and Parliament, an independent broadcasters' group has instituted a standards code that regulates televised violence. The author argues that the code is a product of government coercion and is ultimately enforced by the CRTC, and so should be considered government regulation. He examines whether the Code could be challenged as an infringement on the Charter of Rights guarantee of freedom of expression. Analysis suggests that as long as the courts rely on dubious rationales justifying the strict regulation of broadcasting, and maintain an inappropriate deference to the government in Charter cases, most of the Code would be viewed as a justified infringement. The CRTC has suggested that television violence presents a pressing public health problem, and so requires regulation. The author writes that this argument masks a desire to force on broadcasters a view of proper social conduct. This underlying moralism may comport with modern republican legal theory, which would allow speech regulation to serve the aims of a democractic polity, but it violates the Charter's role as a guarantor of rights against unreasonable state action. Ultimately, the issue illuminates the risks involved in allowing the government to regulate expression on the basis of a purported emergency.

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Citation: (1994) 52(2) U.T. Fac. L. Rev. 345.
Copyright © 1994. University of Toronto Faculty of Law Review.
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