Goldsmith to Scrap Broadcasting Standards Authority After 37 Years and Hand TV and Radio Oversight to Self-Regulation
Media and Communications Minister Paul Goldsmith has announced the government will scrap the Broadcasting Standards Authority and replace the 37-year-old statutory regulator with a self-regulation model similar to the one used by newspapers, magazines and online news sites. The decision, made public on the afternoon of 6 May, would unwind one of the last surviving pieces of the broadcasting reforms that followed the end of the Muldoon era.
In a release issued through the Beehive on Wednesday, Goldsmith said audiences now move seamlessly between traditional broadcasting, on demand services, podcasts and online platforms, yet only a small portion of that landscape sits under BSA oversight. He argued the current framework had not kept pace with how New Zealanders actually consume media in 2026, and that an industry-led code would deliver a more consistent and fairer set of expectations across the whole sector. RNZ first reported the announcement shortly before 5pm.
The Broadcasting Standards Authority was created under the Broadcasting Act 1989 and currently handles complaints against around 200 free-to-air and pay TV channels and radio stations. It rules on accuracy, balance, fairness, privacy, discrimination and good taste, and can order on-air corrections and apologies, take down content, or impose fines of up to $5,000 for breaches. Print and online journalism, by contrast, are already covered by the voluntary New Zealand Media Council, which has no statutory enforcement powers.
Goldsmith said legislation would be drafted in the coming months but was unlikely to pass before the November general election, meaning the BSA will continue to operate in the interim. The new self-regulatory regime, expected to be absorbed by the Media Council or a similar industry body, would itself be reviewed after three to four years to test whether it was holding up.
BSA chief executive Stacey Wood said in response that any future regulator would need to look different to the existing BSA, and that the agency would work constructively through the transition. Media Council chair Brook Cameron said his organisation would engage with the government as the proposal progressed, while warning that any expanded role would need to come with the resources and authority to do the job properly.
The announcement was welcomed by ACT, which has long argued the BSA acts as a brake on free expression. ACT MP Laura McClure called the move a huge win for freedom of speech in New Zealand. Talk-radio host Sean Plunket, whose station The Platform has repeatedly tested the BSA’s jurisdiction over podcasts and streaming output, described the announcement as a wonderful fourth birthday present and said audience feedback, not a government appointed regulator, should ultimately determine what stays on air.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins took the opposite view, calling the decision risky and irresponsible. He said removing a consumer protection mechanism that has operated for nearly four decades, without a fully designed and funded replacement, would leave ordinary viewers and listeners with nowhere to go when broadcasters got things badly wrong. Hipkins also questioned why no public consultation had taken place before the announcement.
Academics moved quickly to back that critique. Victoria University of Wellington associate professor Peter Thompson told RNZ that, in essence, the country was abandoning enforceable content standards for the broadcast media. He called the decision democratically indefensible and warned it really invited a significant political risk, with the potential to trigger what he described as a commercial race to the bottom in a tight advertising market. Former BSA member Pulotu Tupe Solomon-Tanoa’i said the change would be felt most in communities that have used the BSA to push back against unfair coverage and stereotyping.
The decision lands at a difficult moment for New Zealand journalism. AUT’s annual JMAD trust in news survey has shown declining public confidence for several years running. The closure of Newshub in 2024 stripped one of the country’s two commercial television newsrooms, and both TVNZ and RNZ have been working through cost cutting rounds. Industry observers point out that self-regulation tends to work best when news outlets are commercially healthy enough to fund it properly and to take complaints seriously, conditions that are not obviously in place right now.
The BSA reform also sits inside a wider Goldsmith portfolio reshape that includes decisions on public media funding and the Fair Digital News Bargaining Bill, which is meant to force the global tech platforms to pay New Zealand publishers for news content. Together they amount to the most significant rewrite of the country’s media settings in a generation, and one that will largely play out during election year.
Voters who want to see how the parties line up on issues like media regulation, free speech and the role of the state in journalism can use Newswire’s voting tool to compare positions ahead of the November poll.
What do you think — should the Broadcasting Standards Authority be replaced with industry self-regulation, or is a statutory watchdog still needed in 2026? Leave a comment below and join the conversation.