KEY POINTS:
John Campbell and TV3 have been ordered to run a public statement that his staged interview with the Waiouru medal "thief" was misleading.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority has upheld a complaint against the interview which ran on Campbell Live.
The complaint centred on a television interview last February with an actor pretending to be the man responsible for stealing war medals from the Waiouru Army Museum.
The interview showed a man, wearing a hood with his face in shadow. The programme showed a message saying the voice was that of an actor but did not tell viewers that the man on screen was an actor.
TV3 came under intense criticism at the time over the interview.
The Authority has ordered Campbell Live to broadcast a statement that its interview was misleading.
The broadcaster argued before the BSA that it had publicly acknowledged its error, pointing to several interviews straight after the programme ran in which John Campbell and TV3 said it was a mistake.
But the Authority said that while TV3 had been upfront to other media it had never run a correction itself on Campbell Live.
The complaint to the BSA was made by University of Canterbury associate professor Ursula Cheer.
The authority's finding quoted Dr Cheer as saying TV3 "...actually encouraged the audience to be deceived by only telling them on screen that an actor's voice was being used. This actively suggested that the person shown in outline nonetheless was the real thing.
"This deception went to the crucial factual issue of who was in the studio."
Dr Cheer also told the authority that failing to inform viewers that actors are involved during a news interview "...surely takes us out of the realm of news and re-enacted news, and into the world of make-believe... Any media organisation that consistently operated on such a deceptive basis and only attempted to make corrections under compulsion a few days later would entirely lose the trust of the public..."
Dr Cheer said she was happy with the finding, "it's exactly what I wanted".
She said it was important people realised they could go to the Broadcasting Standards Authority and the Press Council.
"I thought it was in the public interest because it was an issue of accuracy and I felt people were probably fooled by that interview and TV3 hadn't put it right soon enough."
The interview sparked debate at the time of its airing.
Canterbury University media commentator Jim Tully said after the interview aired that it had deceived viewers and tarnished a good news scoop.
At the time, TV3's head of news and current affairs, Mark Jennings, said that no cameras had been at the original interview. Instead it was recorded on a Dictaphone tape, which was then transcribed.
He said there was "no intention to stage or try to mislead."
- NZHERALD STAFF
