09/05/2026
This week, Paul Goldsmith (Minster for Media and Communications) announced the Government’s plan to disband the Broadcasting Standards Authority without replacement.
This is terrible news for all of our minority communities, who are currently shielded from slander from major broadcasters in NZ.
Enforced by the BSA, our current Broadcasting Standards protect the NZ public from misinformation and prejudice:
➡️ Standard 4 states that broadcast content should not encourage discrimination against (or denigration of) any ethnic group.
❌ If this is repealed, media outlets will be free to publish content denigrating Māori, Indians, Chinese people etc.
➡️ Standard 5 states that broadcast content on controversial issues of public importance must present balanced viewpoints (unless the audience can be reasonably expected to be already aware of other significant viewpoints).
❌ If this is repealed, media outlets will be free to ONLY present critical or derogatory viewpoints of ethnic communities, without balance. In other words, it will allow large, profit-driven media corporations to post racist propaganda, fuelling hatred and division for clicks and views (as already happens overseas).
➡️ Standard 6 states that broadcasters must make all reasonable efforts to ensure all news/current affairs media is accurate and does not mislead the audience.
❌ If this is repealed, media outlets will be allowed to straight up lie to us. Media won’t even need to be sharing factual information – they will be able to manufacture stories based on little or no evidence, which often results in making inflammatory content about minority communities.
Paul Goldsmith claims that the BSA is not needed, as the industry can “self-regulate”.
This is clearly not true.
We already know that media has a profit incentive to sow division and hatred, as making people angry keeps them engaged. Very few private broadcasters would voluntarily choose accuracy and social responsibility over maximising engagement, which is why we currently regulate them to.
Supporters of the repeal will call the abolishment of the BSA a win for "free speech". In reality, the only new speech that has been enabled is the ability to misinform the public and publish denigrating content about minorities (alongside promote crime or harmful content to children). Everything else was already allowed (the BSA already sets a pretty high bar for breaches: https://www.bsa.govt.nz/broadcasting-standards/broadcasting-code-book-2022/the-codebook/)
In short, this move to scrap the BSA will benefit a small handful of businesses, at the expense of all of our minority communities and our nation’s social cohesion.
(See RNZ’s article on the announcement in the comments)
