KEY POINTS:
One News should have warned viewers before they aired footage showing a group of Australian boys attacking an intellectually disabled teenage girl, the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has found.
One News reported the boys were selling DVD copies of the attack on the internet for $5 and aired partial footage of the recording, on October 25 last year.
The footage aired showed the girl, with her face pixilated, crawling on the ground, the boys taunting her and setting fire to her hair.
It also showed the boys making a chlorine bomb and indistinct images described as "an attack on a homeless man with a flare".
Complainants Roger and Janet Baldwin said the footage breached broadcasting standards of good taste and decency, law and order, fairness, as well as standards of violence and considering the interests of children.
The Baldwins accepted television was a visual medium but said the graphic images in the item went beyond what was normally shown and one short sequence of footage would have sufficed.
TVNZ said news must "necessarily contain material which is inherently distressing or disturbing".
Viewers who had children had the right to choose whether to allow them to watch the news knowing it often contained distressing elements, such as violent crime or scenes from war zones.
It would have been unfair to the victim to minimise the distress of the girl or suggest that her depiction on the DVD was less humiliating than it obviously was, TVNZ said.
It said the news item had not needed a warning about its content because it was broadcast at 6pm and the story had been in the New Zealand media for at least 12 hours.
The BSA found the item breached the standard of violence because the level of violence shown was not appropriate for early evening news.
It said a warning should have proceeded the item.
However, it said TVNZ had valid reasons for showing the footage because it was a legitimate news story which had generated widespread public interest.
It also noted the item did not show, or describe in detail, the most disturbing images from the DVD, such as sexual abuse.
The BSA found TVNZ breached the children's interest standard because the level of violence was likely to disturb children and a warning should have been given before the item to allow parents to exercise discretion.
The BSA did not uphold the Baldwins' complaints that the footage breached fairness or law and order standards.
It said the item was not unfair to the victim because its focus was the vicious assault she had been subjected to, its tone was sympathetic to her and TVNZ took steps to ensure she could not be identified.
It found the law and order standard was not breached because the item did not encourage viewers to break the law by condoning or glamorising the criminal activity shown.
The BSA said the breach of the good taste and decency standard had been adequately addressed in its consideration of the violence breach.
- NZPA
