Broadcasting Standards Authority
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Tuesday, May 20th, 2008This might surprise you. I was looking at broadcast licences the other day. As you might guess, they can be subject to conditions, and most of the ones that are imposed relate to technical issues: making sure there’s no overlapping use of the spectrum, for example. Mostly, they’re nothing to do with the content of […]
Free speech log
Monday, May 12th, 2008Some upcoming free speech cases: Electoral Finance Act judicial review: strike-out application to be heard on 15 May. Applicants John Boscawen, Garth McVicar, Rodney Hide, and Graham Stairmand now want the court to rule that the Attorney-General should have advised Parliament that the Electoral Finance Bill was inconsistent with the Bill of Rights Act, and […]
A tragic comment
Thursday, April 24th, 2008Perhaps Objectivist Lindsay Perigo is within his rights to complain about the “media ghouls’” lack of respect for the dignity of the Mangatepopo canyoning victims’ families and friends. But he’s drawing a long bow to blame the invasion of privacy (and the subjects’ willingness to succumb to it) on his all-purpose whipping boy, “statism”: It is testament to […]
BSA in a bind
Thursday, April 3rd, 2008I think the BSA has broken the law. I think they’ve done it in order to avoid breaking the law. Confused? Let me explain. They’ve issued a decision upholding (by majority) a complaint against TVNZ’s Sunday programme on grounds of inaccuracy and unfairness. But the decision contains no reasoning. It seems this is because the reasoning […]
BSA round-up
Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008When showing graphic footage (such as autopsy photos) on the news, the broadcaster should use a warning, and put the graphic footage far enough into the news item to give parents a chance to turn off the TV. When running a story about a campaign against child abuse, showing some photos of the beaten body […]
HC overturns BSA privacy decision
Sunday, March 16th, 2008Last August, the BSA upheld a complaint from Dr Stephanie du Fresne, the medical director of a mental health clinic, about an interview with one of her committed patients conducted without the clinic’s knowledge. TV3 News interviewed the woman about her electric shock treatment, which she didn’t want. The story revealed that she was bipolar […]
Press Council upholds Bill English complaint
Friday, March 7th, 2008Remember the kurfuffle about Bill English’s 14-year-old son posting homophobic remarks on Bebo? The Press Council says that the Southland Times’ coverage breached the paper’s duty to respect privacy of “person, space and personal information” and to exercise “particular care and consideration when reporting on and about children and young people.” The Southland Times’ front-page story was […]
“Confusing” is right
Friday, February 22nd, 2008Deborah Hill Cone opines that the Advertising Standards Complaints Board decision about the Charlies ad is “confusing”. So’s her column. She says the decision, upholding the complaint about the ad, is confusing because much more graphic non-cartoony stuff is shown on telly, such as Californication. Then she says that the ads have commercial motives, and that this is a reason […]
BSA finds TV screwed up coverage of Electoral Finance Bill
Friday, February 22nd, 2008I brought these complaints, together with the Coalition for Open Government. The BSA has found TV3’s and TVNZ’s coverage of the Electoral Finance Bill, when it was first revealed to the public, contained significant inaccuracies. These complaints related only to this early coverage, though I think we could have complained about other coverage, too. COG thought […]
The Broadcasting Standards Authority and the Bill of Rights
Thursday, February 7th, 2008As I mention below, Claudia Geiringer and I delivered a paper at the conference for John Burrows about the Broadcasting Standards Authority and the Bill of Rights Act (BORA). The BORA requires the BSA to ensure that any restriction it imposes on the media’s freedom of expression (by upholding a complaint, for example) is reasonable […]
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