Why the BSA should be bolstered
The following is an opinion piece from a Tāhono Media member.
The Government has agreed to progress with disestablishing the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA). The ACT and New Zealand First parties want the BSA to be demolished after the BSA published a decision that it was able to consider a complaint made against “independent media space” The Platform, because the programme “meets the Broadcasting Act’s definition of ‘broadcasting’.
However, the BSA has become even more important, especially in the current political environment that is oppressive towards many minority communities.
Our voice matters when we say ‘what others say in the media – including online – hurt us’. As Pulotu Tupe Solomon-Tanoa’i, correctly illustrated in her article, the BSA plays a crucial role in holding media accountable in how Māori, Pasifika, Asians, Muslims and other minority groups are being portrayed.
Media misrepresentation has a real impact on us because it forms negative, implicit bias and stereotypes. These affect equal access to education, health care, employment and our sense of belonging – all necessary for feeling safe and being able to thrive in our society.
I am an Asian woman and I am too afraid to walk into a local pharmacy after the Pākeha female owner treated me as if I were a criminal when I was simply collecting a prescription given by my GP. I was discriminated against at a polytechnic by my teacher because of my ethnicity and gender, so I stopped attending my class in Term 4 last year. I did not feel safe.
I am a New Zealand citizen and I should be able to have equal access to health care and education! But – like too many of us – I do not have equal access, partly because of negative media portrayals that well preceded my existence and because the majority of people remain untaught about the connection between media portrayals and implicit bias. This is why we need the BSA, so that our constructive feedback is considered in making the media more democratic for everyone who lives in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Those who want to see the BSA demolished are the ones that want to continue being abusive and hurtful towards the groups they see as inferior and do not want to face consequences. Freedom of speech does not mean people can say hurtful and insensitive things to others in the community. Freedom of speech is not the right to abuse people. These kinds of portrayals reduce the speech of targeted groups, because people are less willing to voice their concern publicly in an environment that is made hostile through abusive portrayals. This is why we need the media regulatory body like the BSA.
Accepting constructive feedback is a healthy way of growing as a human being. The report by Koi Tū Centre for Informed Futures indicates that, by 2048, forty-eight percent of the population are expected to identify with an ethnicity other than New Zealand European. As a society evolving towards honouring multiculturalism, this is how we learn to coexist with one another – by learning to respect what we have in common as well as our differences.
Yes, we absolutely agree that the Broadcasting Act 1989 needs an urgent update to reflect the media landscape that has changed with the internet. We would like to see BSA’s jurisdiction expanded to all internet media because it would allow us to report hurtful contents online.
We do not just want BSA maintained. We want it bolstered so that it can do justice to the work they do to maintain our democracy.
