BadJournalism
Monday, May 2nd, 2011Meant to write about this last week. How is it that the Sunday Star-Times can believe that a rehashed UK book on criminal justice (Badlands, NZ: A land fit for criminals) is important enough to be front-page news, but that the claims it makes are not important enough to seek out some New Zealand experts […]
Why I bang on about protesters’ rights
Sunday, May 1st, 2011Because I don’t want our country to be a place where this happens. Three street theatre performers, including a professor of anthropology, were preparing to protest against the monarchy with a mock guillotine in Soho Square on Friday. Last Thursday, Police sent three police cars and two police vans to arrest them outside the professor’s […]
Media suppressing judge’s name?!
Thursday, April 28th, 2011An old mate of mine, former Fair Go editor Chris Mitson, wonders why the media aren’t naming the judge who gave Malcolm Chaston bail. After all, Chaston had 71 previous convictions and during his previous stretch in prison, a prison guard had warned of his ambitions to become a serial killer. Police reportedly opposed bail. Chaston […]
Book Review: Media Law in New Zealand
Thursday, April 28th, 2011Media Law in New Zealand John Burrows and Ursula Cheer LexisNexis New Zealand, 6ed, 2010 Reading the latest edition of this terrific text, it’s hard not to be struck by the breathtaking rate of change of New Zealand’s media law. The five years since the last edition have seen the Fairfax contempt prosecution and a […]
How on earth did Hotchin get name suppression?
Thursday, April 21st, 2011So this is what I’ve been wondering. Mark Hotchin, in 2003 a high flying businessman, director of New Zealand’s biggest private finance company, gets duped in a ponzi scam. He loses more than $200,000 of his own money. At the time, and since, there were thousands of investors who might have been interested in this […]
You win some, you lose some
Thursday, April 21st, 2011TVNZ has won its High Court appeal over the Broadcasting Standards Authority’s decision to find that a scene in Hung breached the good taste and decency standard. TV3 lost its appeal over the BSA’s breach finding in relation to Home & Away. Analysis soon.
PLEASE RETURN SOONEST
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011RNZ is reporting that John Key used an Air Force helicopter to attend social events. It says John Key can’t respond because he’s overseas. If only someone could create a magical device that would allow us to talk across long distances…
Pagani sides with the wowsers
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011John Pagani reckons the BSA got it right about Aramoana, and I got it wrong. He thinks it was a “balanced call”, made by the experts we’ve appointed to administer standards that, after all, include good taste and decency and children’s interests. For him, I’m a “Bill of Rights fundamentalist” who treats this as an […]
Oh, and one other thing about the BSA’s dumb Aramoana decision
Wednesday, April 20th, 2011It was based on a really dumb complaint. Here’s the BSA’s summary of the complainant’s original grounds: … the policeman’s “obscene language” breached standards relating to good taste and decency, law and order, responsible programming and children’s interests. The complainant considered that it gave “a negative impression of New Zealand policing” and that “it signals […]
For fuck’s sake
Tuesday, April 19th, 2011I’ve read hundreds of Broadcasting Standards Authority decisions in my time. The vast bulk of them, I agree with. Most of the rest, I figure it’s a line call. Then there are the shockers. This is one. The BSA has found that a story on the TVNZ current affairs show Sunday about the Aramoana massacre […]
« Previous Entries Next Entries »