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The Broadcasting Standards Authority is right
By Steven | October 16, 2025
The BSA has agreed to consider a complaint against internet-based radio station The Platform. This has triggered a cascade of tizzies from Sean Plunket, Winston Peters, David Seymour, the Free Speech Union, David Farrar, and others. Plunket called the complainant an ignorant “plonker”. Peters accused the BSA of “acting like some Soviet era Stasi”. Farrar says they should resign. Plunket says the BSA might “take and investigate complaints on anyone who puts anything on the internet.”
Bollocks.
The BSA is just doing its job. The Broadcasting Act regulates broadcasters. Here’s the definition:
broadcasting means any transmission of programmes, whether or not encrypted, by radio waves or other means of telecommunication for reception by the public by means of broadcasting receiving apparatus but does not include any such transmission of programmes—
(a) made on the demand of a particular person for reception only by that person; or
(b) made solely for performance or display in a public place
That’s a bit technical, but seems clearly to include an internet-based station that livestreams to a large audience. It does not include podcasters that require downloads. It doesn’t include videos posted on YouTube for download. It doesn’t include anyone on the internet who’s not livestreaming to a public audience.
As a matter of policy, The Platform is effectively a radio station. It bills itself as an “independent media organisation focussed on developing open and reasoned exchange”. It fits entirely within the legislative purpose of the Broadcasting Act. It’s conducting the same functions, serving the same good, and creating the same potential harms as NewsTalk. Why wouldn’t it be subject to the same standards – like accuracy, fairness, and privacy?
Bear in mind that the BSA’s oversight of talkback radio is extraordinarily light-touch. It rarely upholds a talkback complaint. The balance standard effectively does not apply to talkback. The BSA doesn’t apply the accuracy standard to people who call in and seldom applies it to hosts. The BSA is happy to interpret most of what goes on there as opinion or analysis. Talkback gets a lot of leeway under the fairness standard. It’s almost impossible for a public figure to bring a talkback complaint, for example. On top of that, the BSA has to consider the effect of the right to freedom of expression in the Bill of Rights Act whenever it contemplates upholding a complaint. Overall, its uphold rate in recent years is only about 6% of all complaints (not just talkback). Its standard punitive powers (usually, just publishing a decision upholding the complaint, sometimes ordering the broadcast of a corrective statement) are not a major incursion into free speech.
It’s true that internet radio wasn’t around when the Broadcasting Act was passed. But the definition of broadcasting isn’t restricted to old-style formats.
I was aware of the BSA’s view about internet radio, which they didn’t try to hide. They had considered in advance what they might do if someone complained about an internet station. You’d think that was sensible. They’d looked at the definition and reached the obvious conclusion. They said if and when the situation occurred they’d give the broadcaster a chance to make submissions about whether they should hear the complaint. I assume that’s what’s happened.
This isn’t a power-grab. It’s limited to livestreams to general audiences, and it’s what the BSA is required to do under the Broadcasting Act.
I can’t see any reason why the BSA’s general Codebook wouldn’t apply to The Platform. But the BSA is going out of its way to be fair to The Platform, which didn’t have any say (as other broadcasters did) in the development of the standards in the Codebook. So it’s only applying the standards specifically set out in the Broadcasting Act, which include taste and decency. Weird, yes. The Act lists a series of standards that broadcasters have to adhere to – taste and decency, privacy, balance, law and order – and then says the BSA can develop other standards and put them in a code (which they’ve done – adding accuracy, fairness and children’s interests, for example).
For what it’s worth, I doubt that Sean Plunket calling tikanga “mumbo jumbo” in the context of a political critique in a radio programme with a philosophy that is well known to listeners will be found to breach standards of taste and decency.
Still, I guess it’s time now to develop a codebook that applies to internet broadcasters. (Are you paying attention, Reality Check Radio?) My guess is that it will be much the same as the existing Codebook.
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