Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Canadian Broadcasting Policy
Canada’s Broadcasting Act, last amended in 1991, outlines industry guidelines for portrayal of diversity.

Canada’s Broadcasting Act, last amended in 1991, outlines industry guidelines for portrayal of diversity.

Media have always shaped the public’s perception of Indigenous people: the wise elder (Little Big Man); the princess (Pocahontas); the loyal sidekick (Tonto)—these images have become engrained in the consciousness of North Americans.

First of all, you can’t choose to give up privilege – privilege is by definition an unearned advantage and you cannot choose to not have it. Guilt and shame are not, however, productive ways to deal with this.

What we see – and don’t see – in media affects how we view reality. Media works can be imagined either as mirrors that reflect an audience’s own experience, windows that give them access to experiences they otherwise wouldn’t have known, or in some cases both.

In this lesson students learn about the history of blackface and other examples of majority-group actors playing minority-group characters such as White actors playing Asian and Aboriginal characters and non-disabled actors playing disabled characters.

In this lesson, students consider the idea that a news source can be “accurate but misleading” through the concept of framing. Students learn about the different ways that news stories may be framed, identify examples of framing in a news story, then find and evaluate examples of framing in news stories on a particular issue.