A lot of Canadian media outlets picked up on televangelist Pat Robertson’s remarks suggesting the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. They picked up on his comments about being misinterpreted and then picked up his retraction.
What about CBN and the 700 Club in Canada?
I did a search on the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council site, the CRTC, and Christianity.ca
Also, Yahoo! Canada
The CRTC site requires ruling searches by number, so I’d have to know what complaints I’m looking for.
I didn’t see anything on the Standards site and no one has spoken up at Christianity.ca as far as I can see. (run by The Evangelical Fellowship of Canada)
The 700 Club is broadcast in Canada, under what I think are fairly standard CRTC rules.
The program has to have 80% of it’s board living in Canada. It is broadcast on CTS out of Toronto and on Vision TV. It is hosted by Canadians and pre-taped. Robertson’s statements don’t make Canadian air ways unless they make news. A Category 2 licence was given to Trinity Broadcasting Network in July 2005.
If hinky theology and poor politics isn’t enough to get you to stop supporting The Christian Broadcasting Network in Canada then maybe the business and economic interests of the founder and his companies will. Here is an piece of Christianity Today’s weblog today: Robertson’s real power
Television and televangelism usually work through viewership. A show with few viewers won’t stay on the air: On commercial television, no advertisers will buy space. In religious broadcasting, no donations will come in. But Robertson hasn’t needed viewers for almost a decade. He has contractual obligations.
Many people have complained about the 700 Club to cable channel ABC Family, which airs it. But ABC Family has no choice. It is obligated under contract to air it. (The FCC may not be able to do anything, either)
In 1988, Robertson sold the Family Network to Fox for $1.9 billion. Not bad, when you consider the channel was originally launched in 1977 through the donations of viewers who had been promised a Christian alternative to “secular” television, then taken public in 1992. CBN got $136 million from the sale. Robertson’s Regent University got another $148 million. Robertson personally received $19 million, and the rest went to the Robertson Charitable Remainder Trust, which will fund CBN after Robertson and his wife die.
But the money wasn’t the biggest part of the deal: Fox Family was required to air The 700 Club three times a day—and, if Fox sold the network, the obligation to air The 700 Club had to be part of that deal, too.
Cable World reported in 2001 that Robertson turned down hundreds of millions of dollars to renegotiate. Largely due to frustration that the 700 Club had disrupted its programming, Fox sold the network to the Walt Disney Company in 2001 for $3 billion and $2.3 billion in debt. Now ABC Family is obligated to air the program three times a day.
Robertson could go on his program and call for the assassination of Michael Eisner and ABC Family couldn’t pull it. He could have zero viewers and ABC Family couldn’t pull it. The ABC Family airtime has an estimated value of $46.8 million a year.
Earlier this year, Virginian-Pilot religion reporter Steven Vegh noted that Robertson’s CBN had depleted the proceeds from the Family Channel sale, but that the ABC Family airings had led to more donations: “[CBN President Michael D.] Little said that financially, The 700 Club is to CBN what the offering plate is to a typical church. ‘In our case, the collections are five times a day,’ he said.”
Donations have increased from $84 million in 1998, the year of the sale, to $132.1 million in 2004. Even more notable is Vegh’s note that donations were only a third of CBN’s 1997 revenue, but 71 percent of 2004 revenue.
That’s partly because CBN has had trouble with its business holdings, including a real estate subdivision, a hotel, and internet site Christianity.com—all sold off over the years.
But it’s a mistake to see CBN as Pat Robertson’s only source of income. CBN was not, for example, part of Freedom Gold Limited, Robertson’s mining operation in Liberia (incorporated in the Cayman Islands with Robertson as president and sole director). Nor was it part of his Creative Energy Co., an oil refinery company. Nor of Robertson’s horse-racing interests.
Robertson is willing to fight for these interests. He may call for the assassination of Chavez, but he’ll brook no criticism of his business partners, even former Liberian president Charles Taylor. “How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down,’” Robertson said after Taylor was indicted for war crimes.
National sovereignty isn’t the only principle Robertson is willing to compromise for business purposes.
If that isn’t enough, check out Jeff Sharlet’s find in a Virginia paper.
CRTC rules on analog and digital broadcasting. Section 10 covers religious programs.
Published 3 years, 3 months ago
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>> “How dare the president of the United States say to the duly elected president of another country, ‘You’ve got to step down,’” Robertson said
But apparently it is OK to murder the duly elected president of another country. Strange logic indeed.
Must be the end of August which is traditionally a slow news time.I was quite surprised to see so many media world wide pick up another comment by Robertson.
What I find sad is that given the fragility of Venezualan politics and culture, his callousness could cause difficulty for a lot of people in the county. It is a miskake to assume other countries would know the lack of regard our cultures have for televangelists.
Hi Bene,
You’re absolutely right. I think folks in Northern America do not realise that the rest of the world will take Pat seriously. They see Pat as a member of Christendom, and believes that what he says is what Christians believe.
Not only will it sour the perception of Christianity further, it destroys the message of the gospel AND puts Christians outside the US in danger. The degree of irresponsibility is big, and I’m totally not surprised that the media worldwide picked up the comment. Why? Because the world is watching how the US government reacts, and more, how the Christian world reacts.
So far, in my little corner of the blogosphere, I see lots of condemnation, but also protests on why we take Pat Robertson so seriously when most folks in the US don’t.
I have to explain (in this post:http://www.messychristian.com/archives/2005/08/the_deceitful_t.htm)
that the non-Us world does not have that kind of experience with Pat.
I think the lukewarm response from both the US government and the Christian leaders will reflect badly on the nations who are strict on this things.
In my country, Pat Robertson would’ve been immediately defrocked, his ministry gotten rid of, and the government stepping in and slapping him hefty fines.
I think Malaysians will find that the lack of action/punishment as “secret agreement with what Pat says”.
Not good!
Also, I was very dissapointed that there are sentiments out there that Pat was right, and that killing leaders are sometimes “needed”.
I think we live in an insane world, LOL!
- sorry for the long post, bene -
Mark Byron’s famous blog header “..anything else that pulls my chatty-ring” springs to mind.
Sadly, it will always be unorthodoxy that will grab the air waves, the tools to transmit, and the attention.
And it will be sincerely done in the name of evangelism. And it will be sincerely believed.:^(
Thing is whole books have been written about this, since the advent of radio this has gone on, but the books and information will never be read by viewers and listeners that support these ‘ministries,’ oblivious to the harm their good intentions and sincerity can cause. Frankly, the rationalizations and justifications and the rage of supporters scares me at times the past few weeks. There are times I have to step back from researching this stuff, it can crush you.
Meantime as Robertson and Falwall et al fade, new ones are springing up as we speak. Olsteen, Haggard, etc.
And people that are on the ground, in the field and doing what God has called us to do, pay the price. So do the people they love and minister to.
It remains a cancer.
We need to be well grounded in our faith, as wise as serpents and as gentle as doves, work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, understand orthodoxy, pray for discernment and speak out when we can.
And Liz, as journalists, I think we need to be prepared to step forward and say, we are sorry, I’d like to listen to what you have to say.
You are correct, there is no accountability, but that’s no surprise. We were warned about the wolves among the sheep. This isn’t ‘go into all the world’, at best it’s pathetic shortcuts. And it is hubris to assume the satellite feeds have much of anything to do with introducing Jesus Christ.
I just used a fair bit of scripture. Saw that a lot the past few weeks as I’ve done some research on a couple of mega media ministries.
*So far, in my little corner of the blogosphere, I see lots of condemnation, but also protests on why we take Pat Robertson so seriously when most folks in the US don’t.*
I wandered over to a Canadian student thread where none churched people expressed their disgust. They thought Robertson anti-semetic, anti-catholic, anti everything except his own self interest.
They didn’t have anything good to say about Christianity. Why should they? If we don’t enter their lives and live it out, then why should they believe any differently?
*I think Malaysians will find that the lack of action/punishment as “secret agreement with what Pat says”.
Not good!*
Yeah, not good. I think there are Canadians that see it that way too.:^(