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Last Meeting: Belinda Moffat & Grace Tong
This week's speakers produced an innovative experience: their address was by zoom. As one of them had a suspected Corvid-19 association, the zoom was pre-arranged, which proved fortuitous as they would not have been able to travel physically from Wellington to the Hutt as the road was gridlocked by a slip.
Belinda Moffat, CEO of the Broadcasting Standards Authority and Grace Tong a legal advisor, spoke of the work of the Authority: what it does and how it works.
Founded in 1989, it has four members and employs six staff, the BSA hears complaints arising from a broadcast from Free To Air television, Radio, Pay Television all the time, and especially at Election time If a complainant has not been satisfied by the response of the broadcaster to whom the complaint must first be made.
It has to juggle the demands of freedom of expression in a democracy versus harm to an individual or society and it must try to prevent young people viewing inappropriate material. In making judgements it has to consider the context, the value (to public good) of a comment, and the age rating of the programme concerned. The standards must relate to social responsibility, balance, and accuracy. and consider aspects such as offensive language, degree of nudity, denigration and hate speech.
Within one month of an election it must ensure all programmes follow all the codes except balance, but even then a programme may criticise but not denigrate, may imitate but not do so fraudulently in a manner likely to mislead. For an account of their presentation, click HERE.
Parting Thoughts:
“The most important thing that most people get from the news is the prediction of the following day's weather, which most people are usually able to predict correctly by themselves." ~ Unknown
"Don't let yesterday take up too much of today." ~ Will Rogers
Former Member, Richard, and Jocelyn, visited the club during a holiday back in NZ on 18 July 2018. Courtesy of Facebook, here is an interesting update from him while travelling within China since Covid-19.
Please study and plan ahead, especially if you are on duty to write a Bulletin Contribution. A reminder that it's also your responsibility to find a replacement if you are unable to fulfill your duty.
* Changeover - Monday 6th July: Please write this in your diary, arriving at 6:00pm for 6:30pm start.
* Upcoming Collection - Women's Refuge: Gregory has names of collectors for Friday 31st July and Saturday 1st August. If you haven't already indicated to help him, please let him know.
* Thanks: A huge thanks to David Gledhill for providing the Speaker summaries over the past 12 months, including his Pongaroa Library best reads. Also to Annette Ruck for selecting the speakers and obtaining biographical notes on each of them.
Learning Session 6:
Have you tried to get the Membership Directory direct from our website? It's easy so here's how, but remember the underlined blue words are "Links", so click on these and you will be taken to the next step....
Go to our Website first, then look at "About Us" and you will see "Member Directory". HOWEVER, because it is confidential information, you must Log-in first and this is done at the top right hand side of the website where it says, "Member Login". If you don't have your personal Log-in, follow these instructions HERE.
