Broadcasting Standards Authority upholds Ministry complaint
Last October Newshub ran a story regarding a survey undertaken by the Ministry in association with International Data Company (IDC).
At the time, in the interests of transparency and to provide assurance that no student or school data had been compromised, we published our response to the Newshub item on the Ministry’s website.
We also made a formal complaint to the Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA).
Read our response to the Newshub item
The BSA published their decision on 29 June 2020 to uphold the Ministry’s complaint. In summary:
“The Authority has found that a segment on Newshub regarding the sale of a report summarising data received from schools in a survey run by the Ministry of Education and I.D.C. New Zealand Limited breached the accuracy standard. The item reported on concerns of the New Zealand Educational Institute and survey participants regarding the sale of the report to Microsoft and Google. The Authority found that the statement ‘sensitive, private data about schools and their students pawned off to private companies by Chinese data giant’, which was included in the item, was materially inaccurate and likely to mislead viewers given the data contained in the report was anonymised and aggregated. The Authority also found the broadcaster did not make reasonable efforts to ensure that the relevant statement was accurate and did not mislead.”
Read the full decision – Broadcasting Standards Authority website(external link)
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