Editorial: Broadcasting watchdog gets it wrong

Photo / Martin Sykes

In the matter of swearing, context is all-important. Obscenities that may be acceptable to a majority of people when used in stressful situations in everyday life are offensive if uttered on television in their living rooms.

And words that offend most people when spoken on prime-time television are acceptable when used in the interests of historical accuracy and authenticity in programmes examining events of significance. All of which makes the Broadcasting Standards Authority's latest decision particularly misguided.

The watchdog has upheld a complaint about the language used in the Sunday current affairs programme last November in a segment marking the 20th anniversary of the Aramoana massacre, during which David Gray indiscriminately murdered 13 people.

The policeman who shot Gray used the f-word twice when detailing what was said between himself and the gunman. The authority ruled that Television New Zealand had breached standards of good taste and decency and children's interests in allowing the swear-word to be aired before 8.30pm.

TVNZ has described the decision as "incomprehensible" in terms of both its right to freedom of expression and the public interest. It is right. In its majority decision, the authority barely paused to consider context while rigidly applying the rule book.

Great weight was placed on its own research into the acceptability of words, which showed, for example, that 71 per cent of the people surveyed considered the f-word fairly or totally unacceptable in the context of an interview, regardless of the time of broadcast.

Surely, however, that figure would have been much lower if people had been asked specifically about the word's use in the interests of exactness and entirety in a programme that revisited a substantial event in recent New Zealand history.

A far more rational view was offered by the authority chairman, Peter Radich, who dissented from the majority. He noted the broadcasting of two clear warnings about the programme's content and language.

It should not be forgotten, after all, that the language is part of a programme about a mass killing of men, women and children. Mr Radich also, quite correctly, scorned the notion that bleeping out the offending words was a viable option.

It would have been "purposeless, inappropriate and demeaning of the policeman and the care he had taken", he said.

But, most importantly, Mr Radich brought the question of context to the centre of the stage. This was expressive and natural use of the English language by two men, each of whom was in a situation of uttermost crisis.

"Most adults would have felt the power of the interview and ought not to have been upset by the use of the words," he said. Likewise, the use of the word in this context would not have been harmful to children.

This is not the first time that broadcasters have been upset by recent authority rulings. These have confirmed a new, more activist approach occasioned by the Government's appointment of socially conservative members.

An earlier instance of this leaning was a decision that G-rated Australian soap Home and Away had breached rules for good taste and decency in its portrayal of sex.

The irony of the watchdog's ruling on the Aramoana programme is that in a field of plenty, it has made the wrong choice. Makers of even prime-time programmes are pushing the bad language boundaries in shows aimed at big viewerships and advertising revenue.

The authority's task is to be able to judge when shows use obscenities purely to offend or sexual content solely to titillate, and when the context of their use makes these acceptable. In the case of the Sunday programme, it failed lamentably.