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CBC/Radio-Canada Content Submission Guidelines for CBC/Radio-Canada Owned or Controlled Platforms (Content Submission Guidelines)

Everyone, every way. All CBC/Radio-Canada platforms are open to people of every age, race, religion, sex, ethnic origin and sexual orientation.

We want your perspective. Probe, analyze, inform. Challenge, advocate, debate. Inspire, entertain, enjoy. Your contributions make our programming richer, the conversations more lively and diverse.

Tell us your story, be a part of the conversation. CBC/Radio-Canada wants you to participate in sharing the content you create/upload (Your Content) with us on all of our platforms. Your Content includes but is not limited to online comments, video uploads and photo submissions.

We want your engaging photos and videos that capture breaking news and/or compelling stories. In addition, we regularly solicit Your Content on various topics for programs and stories, blogs, contests and many other types of interactive engagement.

CBC: Your username links to your CBC profile and will appear alongside any comment. We reserve the right to identify your real name and city of residence from your CBC profile when using Your Content (ie. John Doe from Vancouver says...). Adopting the identity of another person with the intention to mislead or cause harm is a serious violation which may lead to expulsion of the user.

By submitting Your Content, you grant us the non-exclusive right to use your content royalty-free, in perpetuity. Your Content may be published on CBC/Radio-Canada owned or controlled platforms, and may even be included in our stories. CBC/Radio-Canada cannot guarantee that Your Content will be published. We may also edit Your Content for length, size or clarity. Your Content may be indexed by Internet search engines. CBC/Radio-Canada has no obligation to remove Your Content from its platforms even if you make a request. You should think carefully about your intent and the consequence of publication of any of Your Content. For more information, see our full Terms of Use.

When you share Your Content with us:

  • Keep Your Content relevant to the topic and avoid repetitive posting.
  • Be respectful and courteous, as if you were having a face-to-face discussion.
  • If you are writing about legal issues, remember that people are innocent until proven guilty (that may mean using words such as "allegedly").
  • Feel free to link internally within the CBC.ca/Radio-Canada.ca site as many times as you would like. As for external web addresses, we allow no more than three links per post. CBC/Radio-Canada does not endorse the content of external web sites and has no liability as to their content in any event. CBC/Radio-Canada reserves its right to take-down any external link.
  • Radio-Canada: Use French for all of your exchanges and comments. Other languages cannot be used except for an occasional word.
  • We want to hear your own opinion. Your Content must be created and owned by you, including any music and artwork. Breaking copyright rules is not permitted (that includes copying and pasting excerpts from other sites without permission and attribution). If the majority of Your Content was written or created by someone else, even with a proper credit, it won’t be accepted.
  • Any of Your Content that is offensive and likely to expose an individual or a group of individuals to hatred or contempt on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, sexual orientation, age or mental or physical disability is prohibited.
  • The following kind of Your Content is also prohibited:
    • Pornography, vulgarity, obscenity or sexually explicit content
    • Anything illegal
    • Hate speech
    • Threats, harassment
    • Personal attacks, insults and defamatory statements
    • Threats or suggesting committing a criminal act
    • Attempts to mobilise people for any purpose outside of a CBC event
  • Respect other people's privacy by not including personal information in Your Content (such as phone numbers and email addresses) or private dialogue.
  • Be sensitive in your comments regarding the death or injury of private individual, especially children.
  • Any words or your full message in bold, underlined, italics or all CAPS will not be allowed (this makes it difficult to read and in online speak is considered yelling unless it is an acronym in which case using CAPS is permitted).
  • Make it personal, not commercial by leaving out press releases and commercial promotions.

If you violate any of these guidelines, Your Content will not be accepted and your account may be suspended or blocked. CBC/Radio-Canada reserves the right to not open a forum on any given story or to close a forum at any time without notice and to reject the publication of any of Your Content. CBC/Radio-Canada reserves the right to change these Content Submission Guidelines at any time without notice.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

How is Your Content Moderated?

On CBC platforms most of Your Content is moderated. That means that we read it before it is published to make sure it adheres to our Content Submission Guidelines. We will do our best to get it up promptly. We may edit Your Content and to ensure that Your Content is posted, we do ask that you follow these Content Submission Guidelines to create a thriving conversation. We moderate through a variety of moderation techniques including pre-moderation (before publishing), post-moderation (after publishing) and reactive moderation (in response to concerns).

Contributors to CBC.ca start with "Standard" status, meaning they are subject to pre-moderation.

As of April 2010, we added a new status called "Trusted". Contributors with "Trusted" status by-pass pre-moderation, their submissions are posted immediately.

A contributor becomes a "Trusted" member of the CBC.ca online community by being a frequent contributor with a good reputation (i.e: almost all submissions by the member fall within our Content Submission Guidelines and are suitable for publishing).

What if I see content I don’t like?

If you think someone else's content violates the Content Submission Guidelines, you have an opportunity to respond by clicking on the "Reporting" link associated with the content and explaining the problem (ie. Report Abuse). We’ll investigate.

Comments

How do I comment?

Comments are solicited at the bottom of most news stories, blogs and other CBC/Radio-Canada content. In most cases, you need to log in or create an account before commenting. You can create an account in our Member Centre.

What about including personal information in comments?

If sharing more about yourself is relevant to Your Content that you are submitting, go ahead. You can also update your profile and username at any time. Any updates will be retroactive and associated with all Your Content submitted in the past. We do not accept comments containing phone numbers or email addresses since it is private information.

Photos and videos

How do I upload videos and photos?

You can upload video and photos through our platforms.

On CBC.ca the upload is at http://www.cbc.ca/news/yourvoice/yourvideo/upload.html for videos and http://www.cbc.ca/news/photosubmit/ for photos. You can also find file size and details there, for example, we suggest sending the maximum size for photos and the cap is no more than 100 MB for videos.

More information

For more details, read CBC/Radio-Canada's Content Submission Guidelines and official Submissions Policy.

We look forward to receiving Your Content.