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Summarised by Centrist
Willie Jackson has now supplied the clearest political defence yet of the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s move into online broadcasting.
Asked about the ruling on Herald Now, Jackson said authorities needed to “manage and control some of these nut jobs” online. Jackson singled out Cameron Slater and said some broadcasters “should be managed a bit”.
He also described Slater as “the most poisonous person we’ve ever seen on air”.
Jackson’s comments are in relation to the BSA, which has just ruled that The Platform’s Live Talkback programme falls within the Broadcasting Act 1989. They claim that internet transmission can count as “broadcasting” by “telecommunication” and that live or scheduled online programmes are not protected by the Act’s on-demand exception.
Critics say it is convenient that the BSA states this does not extend to Netflix, Prime Video, YouTube or personal online content, and says only a limited number of New Zealand entities are likely to be affected.
The Free Speech Union says that a pre-Internet law has been stretched to catch a narrow class of local broadcasters while leaving giant overseas platforms untouched.
In an interview with Heather du Plessis-Allan, Minister for Media and Communications, Paul Goldsmith conceded that “the legislation is out of date.” Goldsmith argued the government still had “three options” and admitted “we haven’t made a decision on that” despite months of discussion. Pressed on which programmes were now captured, he would not clearly say, beyond suggesting there may be only “two or three” and conceding that “the boundary is not clear” and “it is untidy”.
Editor’s note: The result looks less like neutral rulemaking and more like selective pressure aimed at the “wrong” kind of domestic news media.
Jackson all but said the “mumbo jumbo” line describing tikanga was not the real issue. He said he was “not offended” by that remark, but by other things Sean Plunkett had said before, and that broadcasters like Plunkett and Slater needed to be “managed” or “controlled”.
Yet it triggered the BSA to aggressively try to shoehorn itself in. At a minimum, they will punish The Platform with legal costs. This starts to look less like standards enforcement and more like a free speech issue with a regulator that is not politically neutral but displaying its “progressive” colours.
Read more over at NewstalkZB and Free Speech Union on X
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