If you read the Op-Ed in Stuff this week from the CEO of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, Stacey Wood, you may also find it hard to see it as anything other than an extremely condescending view of minorities.
I am a proud Pacifica woman, but I’m also an individual. I make decisions for myself, form my own views, and have no interest in being coddled by any committee, legislator, or HR manager. To the contrary, I find such condescension thoroughly demeaning.
Apparently, people like me need greater protections. From what and from whom? Well, neither Wood’s Op-ed, nor the report the BSA released yesterday with a similar thesis, never clarifies. I guess that’s one of the scary features: ‘Just trust us. We know what we’re doing.’
The sort of language and attitudes in the firing line could, she argues, include “jokes or attacks about people’s differences.” Yes, you read that right. Even those who make us laugh at our differences could prompt a trauma-induced breakdown of cohesion and harmony in our society.
Someone better warn comedian Trevor Noah not to include those famous cross-cultural observations in his stand-up routine when he tours here in November.
The case Wood presents for greater censorship powers is built off the highly dubious piece of research conducted among Māori, Pacific Peoples, Asian, and Muslim participants.
Appearing to lack any serious objective methodology, the survey relies on the experiences of just over 450 self-selecting participants. The survey is a snapshot in time without reference to the past attitudes and behaviours of those same participants.
Are things improving or getting worse? The stats they’ve gathered offer us no clue. No control group seems to be provided either. Best to let the BSA do all the interpreting, no matter how creative their assumptions may get. After all, they’re the experts; right?
In truth, the BSA’s research findings are beside the point.
Numbers here are likely just for window dressing. I believe there is a more troubling philosophy at work, motivating not only the BSA’s calls for greater censorship, but in all sorts of other public and private institutions which are attempting to slowly suppress free speech in NZ. Wood and her fellow guardians appear to be exhibiting a feel-good, ‘saviour-complex’ kind of mentality that motivates these guardian types to wrap us up in cotton wool and euphemistic nonsense. They appear to be the avant-garde, redefining “harm” so subjectively as to now include perceived slights and jokes told in bad taste (or good taste – who’s to say?).
Harm is what the BSA report claims occurs when free expression isn’t properly regulated, but what does ‘harm’ mean? Well, you tell me. No definition is given.
Real, demonstrative harm is done when a person – whoever they may be (minority or not) – is denied a fair hearing, defined solely by racial or cultural association, and ignored as an individual with agency. Wood and others believe that the slippery subjectivity they advocate for in determining harm – or in other words, offence as it appears in the eye of the beholder – will liberate minority groups.
I firmly believe they are sorely mistaken.
It seems that far too many executives, managers and committees in this country think they “get it”. Their social sensitivity meters are in overdrive - but let me be clear there is no single minority mentality.
We may share lots of things within our various cultures – from jokes to words to historical reference points. But there is diversity within cultures too. Diversity doesn’t stop even if you share the same skin colour, religious beliefs, or language.
Of course, I respect Wood’s right to air her opinion, but I would prefer the BSA stick to adhering to the NZ Bill of Rights Act and current media guidelines. Wood shows her hand when she declares certain behaviours as “unacceptable”. Is the BSA really well placed to decide this, especially as the law as it stands does not prohibit such behaviour.
If we want our society to flourish, we better rediscover what democratic participation in the form of free speech actually means.
Free speech and the exchange of ideas is inextricable from any free society that has ever existed. Yes, even we admit it can cause harm. But it is clear that censorship causes even more.
Let’s not adopt a cure that is worse than the disease.