And the new proposed regulation-which, we stress, is at the consultation stage-is increasing the Belize Broadcasting Authority's enforcement powers and the fines and penalties it can impose.
In fact, the BBA can issue administrative penalties reaching BZ$10,000 per compliance order.
And one of the issues it will have to be very specific about is what constitutes a bad word which cannot be used on air. The BBA's legal advisor discussed that and a word often hinted at which begins with "R":
Ms. Marissa Longsworth, Attorney-at-Law
"The regulations will have a schedule-the Code of Conduct regulations will have a schedule of words, so it may be the first legislation where you have 20 bad words just lined out because you have to state in our lingo-and I will say the word, but Jules has already gone, I would let him teach us that-in our lingo, maybe when you say that is lone madrass, maybe in our lingo that is not offensive, maybe it is, so does it go in the schedule? If it goes in the schedule, then every time Jules says it, there is a fine, right? And so that is the way when we get to the Code of Conduct regulations, there will be consultations on this, so bring every bad word that you know to that consultation and it will be duly considered as part of the schedule, right? So."
We'll keep following the progress of the consultations.
