Canwest Media wants to loosen the rules governing its newsrooms, and has asked the CRTC to make good on a offer to lift certain conditions of licence at its E! and Global stations.

The move follows up on Canwest’s licence renewal hearings of 2001 when, amid concerns about cross-media ownership, the commission took steps to preserve the journalistic independence of the company’s print and TV holdings. These include a requirement that print and TV news must be managed and presented separately, and that broadcast news managers are barred from sitting on the editorial boards of affiliated newspapers.

At the time, however, the CRTC said it would consider suspending these rules if Canwest agreed to an industry-wide code of journalistic conduct through the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council, provided it gets an okay from the commission. The CRTC signed off on the CBSC’s code of conduct late last year, prompting the letter from Canwest.