Mediawatch: Putting down the watchdog?

Source: Radio New Zealand

“This will be a free-for-all, will it?” RNZ host Guyon Espiner – with tongue in cheek – asked Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith on Midday Report last Wednesday.

“We’ve got no Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), so I can go for it?”

Moments earlier, the minister had announced the government’s intention to scrap our official broadcasting watchdog.

RNZ Nights host Emile Donovan opened his show that night with a blast of bleeped-out spoof swearing. Stuff political reporter

Glen McConnell kicked off his TikTok post with a video volley of bleeped bad language, before explaining the differences between the internet and the airwaves – but airwaves are not a free-fire zone just yet.

Goldsmith’s just-released statement also said new legislation “will be drafted in the coming months”.

“The BSA will continue in its role until it is passed into law.”

There’s also an election in the coming months and Goldsmith went on to tell Midday Report the change wasn’t likely before then.

(The BSA also handles complaints about election advertisements with a fast-track system during the election period. That might come in handy if the campaign is a nasty one)

A change of government may mean it never happens.

Why scrap the 37 year-old watchdog anyway?

Media policy is rarely an election-year priority. National-led governments are usually hands-off.

Internal Affairs Minister Brooke Van Velden scrapped a slow-moving, four-year review of media regulation soon after the current government took over in 2023.

Culling the BSA wasn’t in any of the government’s action plans either, but in the last month, Goldsmith had hinted at it.

ACT, which this week claimed the minister’s announcement as a ‘sweet victory’ – was pushing him in that direction.

ACT ran a public petition and drafted a members’ bill to scrap the BSA. An ACT newsletter last month chided the media minister for not falling into line, asking: “Does Paul Goldsmith get paid over $200k just to sit on the fence?”

ACT’s Parmjeet Parmar, chair of the select committee conducting the BSA’s annual review last week, challenged BSA top brass to “justify its existence”.

The Free Speech Union – which said the BSA was censorious – joined in and so did the Taxpayers Union, condemning the $1.7m annual cost to the taxpayer and the cost to broadcasters, which paid levies for the BSA (although only at $250 for every $500,000 of turnover.)

Big-name broadcasters – including those pinged in the past for breaching broadcasting standards – also joined in on the air. Among them, Mike Hosking who said “good riddance” this week.

The issue that catalysed the calls to kill the BSA in recent months was its decision last year to consider a complaint it had received about Sean Plunket describing tikanga as “mumbo jumbo” on his live-streaming outlet, The Platform.

It’s highly unlikely that comment would be upheld as a breach of standards, even if it did offend more than one complainant. The BSA often rules that offence doesn’t override freedom of expression.

Its critics claimed this extended its authority over the internet. Some claimed the BSA would soon come after blogs and podcasts, although the BSA insisted those were not covered by the law that defined its jurisdiction.

Does no BSA mean broadcasting without accountability?

The BSA itself has been among those calling for reform for years.

Our fractured, pre-internet media regulation system also has the New Zealand Media Council (NZMC) covering non-broadcast news outlets, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) and the Classification Office headed by the chief censor.

The BSA is the only one backed with an act of parliament allowing it to financially punish broadcasters and even take them off the air for serious breaches of the standards it applies.

Goldsmith told RNZ broadcasters currently faced more formal oversight than other media – and he preferred the self-regulation of the NZMC.

ACT leader David Seymour agreed.

“In a free society, people form different organisations to achieve together what they can’t achieve alone,” he told journalists last month. “The Media Council is an example of that.

“The BSA is forced on us and the funding of it is forced on people by parliament,”

Founded as the Press Council in 1972 by newspaper publishers, the NZMC now handles complaints about original online content too – including that of broadcasters TVNZ and RNZ.

Media outlets agree to abide by its principles voluntarily to reassure readers they are accountable.

It does not impose fines, prevent publication or order apologies, but members must take their medicine by publishing its rulings on upheld complaints.

Goldsmith has formally urged the state-owned broadcasters to lift public trust in themselves and the wider media too, but the most active media lobby group – Better Public Media (BPM) – claimed this week that taking out the BSA could drive down standards.

Rush to judgement

“He’s removing an enforceable standards regime with a regime that is, in a sense, ‘best intentions’,” BPM deputy chair Dr Peter Thompson told Mediawatch.

“If we expand the role of the NZMC, which by and large does a very professional job, that would extend some of the standards, but I don’t think what is proposed is clear and the fact that the minister hasn’t even worked through the options… suggests that this is a premature announcement.

“Other countries have created platform-neutral models that include both some form of industry self-regulation and co-regulation with a statutory body behind it, so I think we’re remaining an anomaly in the current environment, far from removing one,” said Thompson, an associate professor in media at VuW, who has scrutinised media policy for more than 25 years.

“These standards have evolved over time and the BSA conducts a significant amount of research… and looking at how audiences are engaging in the media. If a member decided that it didn’t want to abide by those standards, the most it could actually get in terms of consequence is public criticism.

“Say, a foreign billionaire coming here to New Zealand, buying up a chunk of the shares in a media company, ousting its board and then dictates a new set of editorial standards. If that billionaire happened to have a penchant for conspiracy theories or a right-wing view of the world, I would say that that’s actually a very dangerous scenario, if there is no mechanism for enforcing [standards].”

Different – but same?

The Media Council’s principles are similar to the broadcasting standards, which also echo the guidelines reputable media companies have for their own newsrooms, but extending the authority of the Media Council over willing broadcasters means they will still have to respond to similar complaints.

Media law expert Stephen Price pointed out this week that the Media Council currently upholds two to three times more complaints than the BSA.

“That’s partly because – irony alert – the BSA takes the right to freedom of expression under the New Zealand Bill of Rights act very seriously,” he wrote. “The Media Council, not so much.”

There’s also no means of appealing a Media Council decision, whereas Broadcasting Standards Authority rulings can be challenged in court. The Media Council frequently asserts the media is not obliged to avoid causing offence (or perceived ‘harm’), but it does not consider complaints about taste and decency or law and/order matters.

Extending its remit to broadcasting complaints would also seriously extend the Media Council. Its members – a mix of senior editors and laypeople – have other jobs, and its annual budget is tiny (currently about $330,000) and shrinking, like many of the media organisations that provide it.

The wisdom of the crowd?

Predictably the BSA opponents and free-speech advocates applauded the government decision, but some journalists and editors resent the watchdog too.

“Complainants to [the Media Council] and the BSA are generally politicised whingers,” veteran political editor Richard Harman declared. “We have a pluralistic media market, that should be enough.”

The broadcasting minister has suggested media that irritate the public will lose support or even go out of business. Maybe media that operate only online – not on public airwaves – should have the freedom to do that unregulated?

“If you are running a media organisation that persistently can reach tens of thousands or even millions of people, then I think you have some degree of power,” Thompson said. “That’s the debate that hasn’t happened here.”

Advertisers under the radar

Another outfit that self-regulates its area of the media without much controversy is the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

The ASA’s annual report also noted pointedly: “Processes anchored in legislation are usually more complex, take longer and cost more – for the parties involved in the complaint or the taxpayer.”

News and editorial content is not the same as advertising, but many complaints about both are about being misled.

“Advertisers need to be aware that, if you can’t prove it, you can’t say it in ads,” longserving ASA chief executive Hilary Souter told Mediawatch.

“I think we dealt with our first internet ad in 2004,” she said. “In general, all of the rules apply, regardless of whether the medium’s 100 years old, 10 years old or was set up last week.”

Its boards accommodate advertisers, agencies, media companies and public members, and – unlike the news media regulators – it’s ‘platform-neutral’.

The ASA 2025 annual report out last week said the number of ads complained about was up 48 percent on 2024. More than three-quarters of ads complained about were accepted for review by the complaints board.

Two of the five ads that generated the most complaints were provocative political advocacy ads that had to be pulled – but generated plenty of coverage.

Is self-regulation working to uphold standards there – and against agents who play fast and loose with rules?

“In 2024, there was a drop,” said Souter, also the current president of the International Council for Advertising Self-Regulation, which meets in Italy this week.

“That was probably the bigger story. Over $4 billion was spent on ad placement in 2025, so the proportion of ads that we get complaints about is pretty small.

“There are quite a few incentives for [brands] to get that right, not wrong in terms of alienating their customer base.”

The ASA’s codes are currently up for review and public input.

Among the things up for debate are ‘shifting community standards’ and ‘widespread offensiveness’.

“If a billboard is seen by lots of people, but we only get three complaints, does that mean it’s not widespread?” Souter said. “It had the potential to be widespread, but people didn’t come to us.”

While Souter is a global advocate of self -regulation, she says our media regulators can all save time and big money for those who object to bad ads or bad news, but can’t afford to go legal to get a verdict.

Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.

– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand