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The future of media regulation in New Zealand?
By Steven | October 14, 2026
There’s a new media self-regulatory body in town. It’s called the IJC: the Independent Journalist Collective. The founding members are Cameron Slater, David Farrar, Brynn Neilson, Penny Marie and Simon Anderson, or at least their organisations. From a brief look at their websites I detect… a certain similarity in their political leanings.
To become members, applicants must be “actively engaged in journalism, news reporting, commentary, media production, or a related field” and must be sponsored by two existing members.
The IJC has a Code of Ethics, which makes a fair fist of covering – albeit succinctly – the main four ethical tenets: accuracy, fairness, balance and privacy. Oddly, though, the “Fairness and Balance” standard doesn’t mention fairness, and there’s no requirement that fact and opinion be distinguished as there is in most other codes of ethics I’ve seen. Nor is there any rule about discrimination or denigration.
There is, however, a complaints process, with a promise to release rulings “within a reasonable time-frame”. Who rules on the complaints? The IJC membership committee. Um, okay. Who’s on the committee? Who knows? The website doesn’t say.
Yesterday afternoon I wrote to ask them about that, and also, who decides who goes on that committee, and whether there are any public members, as there are on the BSA and Media Council (it doesn’t look like it). I haven’t received a response (fair enough I suppose), and will post it when I do. But given the apparent paucity of current members, the possibilities for the identities of the membership committee are fairly limited. Presumably they won’t be able to sit on a complaint against themselves.
I can’t help but wonder how readily some of the members’ publications would survive a complaint arguing inaccuracy, unfairness (if it’s actually a standard in play), or failure to present “relevant viewpoints”.
I also asked whether they plan to apply under the new Broadcasting Amendment Bill (if it’s passed) or the existing Broadcasting Act (if it’s not) for regulatory recognition. If they get that, their members will be exempt from the Privacy Act in their news activities, and will have some court attendance rights.
This does raise questions about what criteria the government will use to decide who gets this regulatory recognition.
Anyway, we might be getting a glimpse of the future of media regulation in this country – a patchwork of different voluntary bodies policing different standards with different degrees of effectiveness.
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