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Paul Henry broadcasting complaint
By Steven | March 27, 2011
The BSA has found that TVNZ’s actions in response to Paul Henry’s ill-judged comments about the Governor-General were sufficient. Good call, I think.
Along the way, though, they also found that the comments breached standards of good taste and decency, fairness and discrimination. Perhaps that’s not too surprising. TVNZ had upheld the complaint on all three grounds.
But I think it is a bit worrying. For the reasons I gave here, there are problems with all three grounds. Those problems are not discussed in the decision, and in fact none of the parties had any particular interest in raising them. But if we take the BSA’s decision at face value, it seems to have lowered the boom for successful complaints for all three of these standards, without explaining why the usual approaches to them don’t apply.
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