KEY POINTS:
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has blasted TVNZ's Close Up programme after the show "humiliated and treated unfairly" a woman charged with drink-driving.
In the May 28 item, the woman, convicted of her second drink-driving offence, was approached by a reporter outside an Auckland court.
The woman - who did not have name suppression - declined to be interviewed for fear of losing her job, but was shown running away from the reporter. Her name, age, marital status and salary were also reported. Though her face was initially pixilated, she was later "unmasked" and named.
David and Heather Green of Auckland objected to the woman's treatment, saying the item had imposed an extra penalty over and above that imposed in the courtroom.
TVNZ argued it was not unfair to film people convicted of a crime, as they had chosen the course that led to conviction and knew they risked media attention.
But the authority agreed the woman was treated unfairly, ruling it was the manner and circumstances in which she was identified - rather than the identification alone - that caused the unfairness.
It said the woman was singled out and humiliated, simply because she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, and her "unmasking" at the end of the item was sensational and gratuitous.
In another decision, the authority upheld a complaint against a show in which a man's buttocks were attacked with a belt sander.
It agreed with Wayne Atkins of Whangarei that TVNZ's May 18 episode of Balls of Steel set a dangerous and stupid example, breached standards of good taste and decency, law and order, and children's interests.
In the item, a man applied an electric belt sander twice to the other man's bare buttocks.
The injured man then had a nail hammered through the skin between his thumb and forefinger and into a block of wood.
The authority also upheld a complaint by Christchurch man Graham Harrop, who took issue with a C4 programme about university life.
It ruled the show Studentville advocated liquor consumption in a manner that was not socially responsible.
The authority said that the programme not only implicitly condoned the consumption of liquor, but in fact presented it in a positive light and as a necessary part of attending the "Uni Games".
