A Question of Balance?

The BSA has released two important new studies this week, Significant Viewpoints: broadcasters discuss balance, and Issues facing broadcast content regulation. CEO Jane Wrightson says, “The first is about the journalistic standard of balance, and the second about the need for New Zealanders to think about the shape of broadcasting regulation in the digital era”.

Jane Wrightson is launching Significant Viewpoints at the JEANZ “Journalism Downunder” conference in Auckland today.

In Significant Viewpoints, the broadcasting standard of balance is explored by leading New Zealand broadcast journalists and producers. The question they were looking at was, how relevant is the balance standard to the different fact-based formats from news to current affairs to documentaries and talk radio?

The BSA’s second report, Issues facing broadcast content regulation, asks the question, what kind of restraints, if any, do New Zealanders want on broadcast content in the 21st Century? Should content like video on demand, or internet, or mobile downloads be regulated? What if a broadcast television or radio programme is grossly unfair to a private citizen yet is being simulcast on an internet site? Should there be a uniform set of rules for such cases no matter the broadcast platform?

Clearly, traditional news and entertainment platforms are rapidly being overtaken by digital technologies. “The real question underlying both publications,” says Ms Wrightson, “is, in the digital age, what will be the best system to temper the media when it gets things wrong?”

Both publications are available from the BSA website www.bsa.govt.nz or in bound copy.

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