Steven Price

Website: https://www.medialawjournal.co.nz/
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  • I was recently asked to prepare a brief opinion on the issue of the legality of the Media Council’s waiver. The client has consented to having me post this. I invite discussion! You can email me at steven.price@vuw.ac.nz.
  • My research was limited. I found that the legal position is not entirely clear, in part because

    • …

    Just a reminder of what’s at stake here. As I wrote earlier this year:

    If The Platform and any other internet-based TV or radio platform are not subject to the Broadcasting Act, then they are not subject to broadcasting standards, and could do the following things:

    • Wax falsely about the benefits of a new product’s

    …

    So the government has decided to abolish the BSA. Various people are crowing about it. They are pointing to the BSA’s decision to hear a complaint against internet broadcaster The Platform. ACT says this was an attempt to “police the internet… to stretch a law written for rabbit-ear TVs over podcasts and livestreams”.

    It’s hard…

    The BSA has ruled that it has jurisdiction to receive complaints against the online media company, The Platform. “Using an unduly technical interpretation to exclude online broadcasters would create a significant gap in the protections available to New Zealanders”, it wrote. “We consider the standards regime logically, and appropriately, includes online broadcasters such as…

    Julian Batchelor has lost his defamation lawsuit against TVNZ and former Disinformation Project director of research Dr Sanjana Hattotuwa. They’d accused him in an online article of racist rhetoric, inciting hate and real-world harm.

    Batchelor says this struck at his character and integrity, and that he didn’t believe or claim that Maaori are racially inferior.…

    An overlooked part of Talley’s Group’s defamation case against TVNZ is its attempt to get TVNZ to disclose its confidential sources. It applied to court to make TVNZ give them up.

    This was a real test of our journalist source protection regime. In the two leading cases up to now, the courts had (effectively) refused…

    It’s becoming a regular thing to see hackers get hold of reams of private data and threaten to leak it. (See recently: Manage My Health and Neighbourly leaks. And in recent years: Commerce Commission and Te Whata Ora.)

    Courts readily grant injunctions to prevent the disclosure of such purloined information, usually on the basis of…

    There’s a sort of maxim we talk about in defamation classes in law school. It illustrates a point, and it’s good for a chuckle. “It’s not defamatory to call a crook an honest person”. Because it’s only defamatory if it tends to lower you in the opinion of “right-thinking members of society generally,” see?

    Let’s…

    I have long been frustrated that the BSA seems to have defined the balance standard almost out of existence. Balance isn’t required because the thing you’re complaining about wasn’t the focus of the programme. Or the programme’s not controversial. Or the introduction makes it clear the audience is only getting one side. Or the issue…