« A plea for savvy election night coverage | Main | TV3 next in the dock…? »
TV3 wrong about gong
By Steven | October 3, 2008
TV3 misled viewers when it broadcast its Campbell Live interview with an actor playing one of the Waiuru Army Museum medal thieves, the BSA has ruled. Viewers were only told that the voice was that of an actor, and might well have thought the person they were seeing was one of the real thieves.
After Ursula Cheer made her complaint, TV3’s complaints committee adopted a heroically generous interpretation of the accuracy standard to avoid this conclusion. It argued that it corrected the report promptly afterwards, and so there was no ongoing breach of the standards.
The BSA noted that it actually took TV3 three days to fess up, and it never broadcast a correction on Campbell Live, or indeed, anywhere else on TV3. It did, however, admit the error in other media.
Here’s the rule laid down by the BSA:
The Authority accepts that there would be occasions, where an error was corrected very quickly, when it could not reasonably find a breach of the accuracy standard. However, the Authority considers that the broadcaster itself would need to have corrected the error in the same medium and for a similar audience as the original broadcast, and at the earliest reasonable opportunity.
Topics: Broadcasting Standards Authority, Media ethics | No Comments »
Comments
You must be logged in to post a comment.