Will factual sex-based language be resurrected by the media after the demise of NZ’s Broadcasting Standards Authority?

Some big news in New Zealand recently has been that the Broadcasting Standards Authority - the BSA – will be disestablished after the general election on 7 November this year. Some are rejoicing at this, and others are predicting dire consequences as a result. I’m in the former camp, particularly as the BSA has gone all-out woke, including the creation of guidelines called Complaints Concerning Gender Identity Issues.

Naturally, the guidelines have nonsense in them like saying ‘misgendering’ and ‘deadnaming’ are harmful, which I guess means hurt feelings, and “the trans community is particularly vulnerable”. Yeah, right. In other words, they reckon the most pandered-to demographic on the planet doesn’t get enough special treatment, so here are some guidelines to give them more. The BSA seems to have missed the stats which show that men who say they’re women are imprisoned for sexual offences at more than twice the rate of other men, and that they’re more likely to be murderers than murdered. Vulnerable, my rear end.

Apparently, it’s not considered demeaning to call women “people with cervixes”, though, and they claim that the Māori word ‘takatāpui’ is “a term used to embrace all Māori with diverse genders, sexualities and sex characteristics”. This is simply a modern-day stretch, to fit the trans agenda, of its original meaning of those attracted to the same sex as themselves.

They go onto to state “NZ law recognises sex is not immutable. Our legal system has allowed changes to nominated sex on a birth certificate ….” That first assertion is a lie. There is nothing in legislation around sex self-ID at all which recognises that sex is now magically not immutable, because the marker can be changed on a birth certificate. That is pure fabrication by the BSA. Additionally, guidance from the Dept of Internal Affairs makes it quite clear that the sex marker on a person’s birth certificate does not have to be taken as proof of a person’s sex. I’ll be informing them of these facts, irrespective of their forthcoming dissolution, for the (unwanted, I suspect) edification of their staff wherever they may eventually end up. If I don’t get an obfuscatory reply, I’ll buy myself my first margarita in years.

Some background on the BSA, and how it came to eat itself. It was established in 1989 to create, maintain, and uphold programming standards for New Zealand radio and television. It has the power to order apologies, and/or impose fines. Since 1989, the landscape of broadcasting has changed dramatically with the advent of the internet, though, and questions have been raised for a while about the BSA’s continuing relevance due to that. However, it clung on.

Its demise started back in August last year, when an individual by the name of Richard Fanselow made a complaint to the BSA about The Platform’s host Sean Plunket’s reference to tikanga Māori as “mumbo jumbo“. Tikanga is societal lore within Māori culture, and there are as many differences as to how this is practised as there are iwi and hapu (tribes and sub-tribes). My understanding is that Sean made his “mumbo jumbo” comment in the context of expressing an opinion about a public service job advertisement, which had knowledge of tikanga Māori as a requirement, even though it wasn’t relevant to the job.

Richard Fanselow is known to me, too. He has made virulent comments on my Substack and in direct emails to me, and I eventually had to block him. Others, besides Sean Plunket, have also been on the receiving end of his offensive attention. Why the BSA decided to run with his silly little complaint about the “mumbo jumbo” comment by Sean can only be surmised. To me, it’s not unlikely that the staff at the BSA have a collective dislike of The Platform as a whole, due to its non-woke position, and that was the foundation for upholding the complaint.

The matter went public. Questions started being asked about how much jurisdiction did the BSA have over a programme which transmits from the internet, as The Platform does, and was the BSA still relevant in today’s world? Finally on 6 May, Paul Goldsmith, the Minister for Media and Communications, said “no” it wasn’t. It will be disestablished after the general election on 7 November, as it will retain responsibility for candidate and party advertisements on radio and free-to-air TV during the campaigning period. What happens after that is still to be determined, but if a left-leaning government gets in they will in all likelihood keep the BSA, because it has the same ‘values’ as them.

If all goes according to plan, though, I’m curious about whether the BSA’s closure will free up the traditional media to accurately report a person’s sex, instead of their gender identity. Although guidelines are not rules, they can get wielded as such and have a chilling effect. Admittedly, the woke-indoctrinated personnel who now litter TV and radio may be quite happy with that chilling effect.

But if they were wise – yes, I know, a long shot - they should embrace that freedom, so they stop looking stupid. Recently, a man who says he’s a woman was reported as missing. This is the headline and picture that the NZ Herald used.

Whilst the NZ Herald is not TV or radio, they sing from the same gender ideology song sheet as them, and if just of them one is brave enough to throw away that song sheet, others will follow.