New Zealand’s Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA) has upheld a complaint that a radio opinion piece criticising Israel’s actions in the Israel-Hamas conflict breached the accuracy standard.
Yahoo! News New Zealand reports that a radio host condemned Israel for targeting civilians and said that a recent bombing of a Palestinian school had “killed every civilian inside”.The comments were made during Newstalk ZB’s KPMG Early Edition broadcast on 1 August 2014.
Other news coverages reported that up to 16 people were killed and 200 others injured in the bombing of the school where 3,300 people where sheltering.
Stephen Goodman, President of the New Zealand Jewish Council, says: “It is encouraging to see that the Broadcasting Standards Authority recognises some of the inaccurate reporting on the conflict between Israel and the Hamas..
“We can hope that all New Zealand broadcasters will take note of this decision and raise their journalistic standards to ensure that a fair and balanced view is presented with the bias that is currently prevalent.”
While hosts are entitled to express their opinions in editorials within news and current affairs programmes, they must ensure that if they make factual statements material to the issues discussed, these are accurate to avoid misleading the audience.
No order was made as the BSA deemed publication of the decision sufficient to remedy the breach and correct the inaccuracy.