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Broadcasting Standards Authority

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BSA cracks down?

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Is the Broadcasting Standards Authority, with its new personnel, getting tougher on taste and decency issues on TV? Earlier this year, it upheld complaints against TV3 for a somewhat raunchy scene in Home & Away at 5:30pm , and TVNZ for a somewhat raunchier scene in Hung at 10:10pm. Now it’s upheld two more complaints against TV3, […]

Pike River privacy IV

Friday, December 17th, 2010

You may have seen the debate between Dr Nicole Moreham and I about the possibility of a privacy lawsuit against the media for showing pictures of grieving Pike River coal mine relatives leaving the meeting where they were told that the miners had certainly died. Here’s a recent BSA case that sheds some light. It […]

Pike River privacy breach

Friday, November 26th, 2010

My colleague, privacy expert Dr Nicole Moreham, reckons the media are guilty of breach of privacy with their splashy coverage of the victims’ grief-stricken families emerging from the briefing where they were informed of their loved ones’ fate. She has kindly allowed me to cross-post (original source here): There would be few New Zealanders who […]

Did Paul Henry breach broadcasting standards?

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

As you know, TVNZ Breakfast presenter Paul Henry asked the PM whether he would appoint someone to Governor-General who looked and sounded more like a New Zealander, plainly suggesting that because Sir Anand Satyanand is ethnically Fijian-Indian (though born and bred in NZ), he’s not appropriate for the job. I think that’s racist.  But I’m […]

Improving accuracy

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010

A funny thing happened on the way to loosening the Accuracy standard in the Broadcasting Codes of Practice. It got tightened up instead. Let me explain. The old Radio code said broadcasters have to be truthful and accurate on points of fact. The TV code was the same. Broadcasters hated it. It meant that they […]

The case against the case against Robin Bain

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

So, now that TVNZ has broadcast its special edition of Bryan Bruce’s The Investigator: The case against Robin Bain, compellingly arguing that Robin Bain couldn’t have committed the Bain family murders, can David Bain and his team do anything about it? They argue that it’s “unadulterated rubbish”, contains “mischievous misrepresentations of facts”, “perpetuates a fraud”, […]

Off-Target

Friday, June 11th, 2010

The BSA has just given TV3’s hidden-camera wielding consumer affairs show Target a spanking for wrongly claiming that Cafe Cezanne’s chicken was infested with faecal coliform. Turns out, Target had got its samples mixed up. Worse than that, Top Shelf, the company that produces Target, initially provided wrong information to the cafe about when the sample […]

BSA fucks up

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

The Broadcasting Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against the radio broadcast of Lily Allen’s song “Fuck You”, broadcast on Sunday and Tuesday afternoons on The Edge. I think they were wrong to do so, and I think it demonstrates that they still don’t really understand the Bill of Rights Act. If it were just […]

Michael Laws breaches broadcasting standards again

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

The BSA has pinged RadioLive talkback host Michael Laws yet again, this time for “blatant misrepresentation”. He had an exchange of emails with a health official concerned with Maori smoking that said: Laws: Stick to trying to get Māori to quit smoking, will you? Not exactly a sparkling success story, is it? Broughton: Not really. […]

Mau about gay issues

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

Well, recent events have given a certain piquancy to the broadcasting standards complaint about this exchange between Paul Henry and Alison Mau, on Breakfast last year: Henry:  …a little bit later in the morning I thought we might talk about the Acting Principal Family Court Judge’s call that it’s time the adoption laws were updated […]

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