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Silly old TVNZ
By Steven | January 27, 2012
This is why I don’t like doing TV. I gave TVNZ news an interview on the teapot saga yesterday, explaining my views as below that the risk is low for anyone who publishes the contents of the tape.
Their broadcast asserts as a fact that “we can’t broadcast what was said for legal reasons”. Later the reporter says “legal experts” (who are the others, I wonder?) say police will struggle to charge the leakers, and then there’s me saying that it’s hard to see how the police could prove the publishers knew they were publishing an illegally obtained recording. Of course, that also applies to the media, not just the leakers.
So why is it that TVNZ can’t publish for legal reasons?
Topics: Internet issues, Journalism and criminal law, Media ethics | 2 Comments »
2 Responses to “Silly old TVNZ”
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January 27th, 2012 at 9:59 am
Could it be legal reasons other than criminal liability? For example, Standard 3 of the Free-to-Air Television Code of Broadcasting Practice?
January 27th, 2012 at 10:06 am
I suppose that’s possible. (Standard 3 is about privacy). I’d like to see them spell out the concern though. The BSA has held that both strands of privacy – private facts and intrusion – involve questions of reasonable expectation of privacy, so many of the arguments would be similar. In addition, there’s a defence of public interest in the broadcasting codes. I would have expected a broadcaster to that the view that the defence applies here.