Editorial: Challengers to freedom of speech require due caution

Opinion

Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive and impart information and opinion of any kind and in any form."

This is Section 14 of the Bill of Rights Act. It is short on words and long on promise. There are exceptions for the likes of defamation and criminally unacceptable circumstances but the law cannot be clearer: New Zealanders enjoy freedom of expression.

That freedom is frequently under threat. Too many people want to constrain it. This week Special Olympics New Zealand called for the word "retard" to be banned by the Broadcasting Standards Authority after its puerile use by TVNZ presenter Paul Henry to describe singer Susan Boyle.

The global Special Olympics movement wants the word to go the same way as "nigger", reviled and abandoned from usage. As a voluntary goal, through education, that is commendable. The next step, urging a regulator to declare a word unusable, is fraught with danger.

Broadcasters, other media and individuals do not need the state's direction on what can be said. They need sensitivity to public and private feelings and the judgment to know when a term exists purely to offend. TVNZ has indulged this offence. It will be accountable to its viewers for exercising its freedom and that is as it should be.

Another concern is the BSA finding this week that One News' coverage of the Clayton Weatherston trial was offensive for airing the accused's own words of his gory stabbing of Sophie Elliott. Authority members declared the item should have been preceded by a warning.

Here, a regulator is playing at editor and censor, determining how a factual court report of clear public interest should be presented. Section 14 is compromised, again.