What is the Broadcasting Standards Authority and why is its future in doubt?

Source: Radio New Zealand

Explainer – Who decides who’s a broadcaster, and who regulates the media in New Zealand? It might all be about to change.

The Broadcasting Standards Authority is likely to be disbanded or completely revamped under proposed media reforms by the government.

It’s recently become part of a debate over what exactly constitutes broadcasting these days – and whether online content should be regulated in the same way television and print news has traditionally been.

“The entire media regulatory system has been on borrowed time for more than a decade,” said Gavin Ellis, a media commentator and former editor-in-chief of the New Zealand Herald.

“Successive governments have failed to deal with the rising issues of technologically-determined regulatory bodies that the Internet Age has put past their use-by dates.”

Broadcasting Minister Paul Goldsmith indicated this week that he is “leaning” towards the option of scrapping the authority entirely. What will that mean for media regulation?

What is the Broadcasting Standards Authority anyway?

The Broadcasting Standards Authority, or BSA, was created by the Broadcasting Act 1989 as an independent Crown entity to make and uphold standards for radio, free-to-air and pay television.

It acts in response to formal complaints made about media content. That means they look after things like offensive content, possible discrimination, accuracy, privacy and fairness.

If it upholds a complaint, it can order the broadcaster to make a statement about the decision and impose fines of up to $5000.

It can even – very rarely “and only for the most serious complaints” – ban a broadcaster for up to 24 hours. (That happened to the now-defunct ALT TV which was banned for five hours in 2007 for broadcasting racist and obscene text messages on screen.)

OK, but what is the New Zealand Media Council? Is that the same thing?

The Media Council is separate from the BSA. It’s a non-governmental group which media outlets voluntarily subscribe to, and it has no legal powers.

Founded as the Press Council in 1972, it was originally meant to focus on newspapers but has since broadened to include online content for broadcasters including TVNZ, RNZ, NZME and others. Complaints are filed against groups that are members of the council and have agreed to abide by its principles.

It does not impose fines, but it does require members to publish its rulings on their content.

There is crossover between the two groups’ jurisdictions – for example, RNZ’s content falls under both, with complaints about radio content being covered by the BSA while online content falls under the Media Council.

Separate from all this, there’s also the Advertising Standards Authority, which deals only with complaints about advertising, not editorial content.

What’s the current stoush about?

It all relates to comments Sean Plunket made last year on his online site The Platform, reportedly describing Māori tikanga as “mumbo jumbo”.

A complaint about that was made to the BSA – which has declared that The Platform comes under its jurisdiction as a broadcaster to act on complaints.

The BSA has not yet made a ruling on the specific “mumbo jumbo” complaint, but wrote in a decision that “It found programme transmissions via the internet fall within the definition’s reference to transmission by ‘telecommunication’, applying a plain English and purposive interpretation of the term”.

Plunket, a veteran journalist for MagicTalk, Newstalk ZB, RNZ and others who launched his independent website in 2021, has said in response that he’s not a broadcaster, he’s a webcaster.

However, the BSA has said that Plunket is “an online broadcaster of a nature we consider clearly falls within BSA jurisdiction”.

Plunket has fought back, telling listeners “It is a hill I’m prepared to die on”.

The authority’s chief executive Stacey Wood told RNZ it decided in 2019 that it also regulated certain online content, although the Plunket incident was the first complaint that met those requirements.

“Our view is that online broadcasters that resemble traditional TV or radio stations clearly fall within the scope of the Act,” Wood told The Post last year.

On his website, Ellis has written that the BSA’s call was an “attempt to ram a round peg into a mouldy square hole”.

“In order to claim jurisdiction over Sean Plunket’s online entity The Platform, the BSA was forced to squeeze every last morsel of possible meaning out of its empowering legislation.”

The question of whether or not the BSA’s interpretation of its powers goes too far has sparked plenty of debate.

“The BSA is just doing its job,” Wellington media lawyer Steven Price has written on his website. “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.”

At the same time, barrister Samira Taghavi wrote for Law News that the BSA was exceeding its mandate and that “a regulator cannot expand its jurisdiction because new technologies look similar to old ones.”

So it’s all about what “broadcasting” means in 2026?

Basically. The nature of media has changed an awful lot since 1989, when the current Broadcasting Act was implemented.

Even in its own decision on Plunket and the Platform, the BSA noted that “we have been calling with increasing urgency for Parliament to update the Act for over 20 years”.

In 1989, the internet barely existed, and nobody would have foreseen millions of influencers and podcasters taking their voices across the world.

The question is which of those voices might be considered journalists, or broadcasters that would fall under regulatory authorities.

“Until the Act is updated, it needs to be interpreted in a way that has some modern relevance – and, on receipt of a relevant complaint, we are charged with applying the law as it is,” the BSA wrote.

The current landscape is what Ellis has called “a clutter of separate regulatory bodies, each independent of the others, some with statutory mandates while others are voluntary.”

Is the BSA going to be abolished?

It’s looking increasingly likely.

Broadcasting Minister Goldsmith signalled it will “probably” happen in comments at a public meeting this week and confirmed that to Newstalk ZB although he cautioned no final decisions had been made.

“It’s become arbitrary as to who’s covered and who’s not covered, and so I think probably the tidiest solution is to revert to a Media Council-style arrangement.”

It’s all become a bit of a political hot potato, with some politicians demanding the BSA vanish.

New Zealand First leader Winston Peters accused the BSA’s decision on The Platform of “bordering on fascist”. In an interview with Plunket, Peters said, “Frankly, they should go. They should be abolished. They’re out of time. They’ve got no use anymore.”

The ACT party has launched a member’s bill to abolish the BSA entirely, with MP Laura McClure calling it “a legacy institution that has outlived its usefulness.”

“It’s a creature of 1989 – before the internet existed – we live in a different world today and it’s clearly overstepping its mandate,” ACT leader David Seymour told reporters recently.

However, Ellis said the issue shouldn’t become part of partisan politics.

“David Seymour and Winston Peters are making political hay from the BSA determination on The Platform. Paul Goldsmith’s responding equally politically.”

“We don’t have – and don’t seek – the power to censor media,” the BSA notes on its website in a section about the recent debate, where it also says that “Freedom of expression is central to our work and the starting point for every BSA decision”.

“We intervene only when potential harm meets the high threshold to outweigh this right. Over the past three years, in which there were many hours of broadcasts across New Zealand, we’ve upheld complaints just 20 times in 311 decisions.”

What would replace the BSA?

It’s not quite clear yet.

Last year, the government put forward a discussion document on media reform for public debate which could be used as a starting point for possible future legislation. But the government has yet to announce any final decisions on the proposal.

In that report, a draft proposal that “The role of the regulator (currently performed by the BSA) would be revised, with more of a focus on ensuring positive system-level outcomes and less of a role in resolving audience complaints about media content”.

The report said, “Further work will be required to determine an exact definition of ‘Professional Media’, particularly as media forms and services continue to emerge and converge”.

“Our intention is to capture organisations that commission, produce, or directly pay for media content and distribute it as their primary business – including New Zealand broadcasters and streaming platforms, global streaming platforms, online text-based media, newspapers, and magazines.”

However the draft proposal indicates it would not include online platforms that primarily host user-generated content or access to others, specifically mentioning Facebook, TikTok and Google’s search engines.

“There is a compelling need for the politics to be taken out of a serious discussion on the future of media regulation – and that discussion must include the content carried on transnational platforms,” Ellis said.

So what’s likely to happen?

Media regulation reform has reached a tipping point and it’s clear things are about to change.

The BSA has said on its website it welcomes the government’s proposals for “regulation covering all ‘professional media’ regardless of platform”.

“We welcomed these and look forward to seeing them progressed. In the meantime, we will continue to apply the Act in its existing form, consistent with the purpose it was created for.”

Ellis has written that the ideal solution is to form a nonpartisan Royal Commission to look at media regulation, with both National and Labour agreeing to be bound by its recommendations.

“A Royal Commission is not a ‘nice-to-have’: It is vital that it be commissioned,” he said.

“The political gamesmanship we are now witnessing points strongly to the need for an independent body – before which the public has the right to be heard – to determine the basis and structure for future media oversight.”

And then there’s the whole question of whether sites like Facebook, TikTok, YouTube et cetera are actually “publishers” – a question which has dogged courts, lawyers, media analysts and tech companies for years now.

Trust in the media is a key talking point these days, with the latest report by AUT’s Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy indicating that it’s ticked up slightly in Aotearoa after years of decline.

Ellis said that politicians should keep trust firmly in mind as they tackle the issue of media regulation.

“Is it too much to ask of our bickering politicians that they rise above themselves and collectively place the matter in the hands of a Royal Commission?”

Ellis said politicians ultimately need to rebuild media regulation from the ground up.

“The obvious and critical need is for a complete rethink of the regulatory environment – which must also encompass transnational platform content by deeming them publishers – and the establishment of a new system founded on public trust, the prevention of harm, and the balancing of free expression atop those two pillars.”

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