Annual Report 2025
The Annual Report 2025 outlines the Authority's key achievements over the past year and details progress against long term outcomes and objectives. It includes performance information such as complaint determinations and the Authority's financial statements.
A copy of the full report is available for download for the year ended 30 June 2025.
BSA Annual Report 2025 (year 2024/2025)
Chair’s report
Te pūrongo o te tiamana
Tēnā koutou e te hunga e whai pānga ki ngā mahi papaoho, ki a koutou hoki e pānui ana i ēnei kōrero, kā nui te mihi ki a koutou, ki a tātau.
Against the backdrop of another highly challenging year for broadcast media in Aotearoa, the Broadcasting Standards Authority has remained committed to our vision of freedom of expression in broadcasting without harm. After government consultation on several media reform proposals earlier this year, we hope the 2025/26 year will bring the changes necessary to continue this vision into the future. The current legislative model is, as it has been for over a decade now, obsolete and out of step with today’s media landscape.
Complaint numbers have fallen since the early years of COVID-19, and this year we received fewer than 100 formal complaints for the first time since 1990/91. This may be a pendulum swing, but more likely signals a future trajectory under the current legislative model, as audiences and media content producers move away from linear broadcasting to increasingly online-only platforms.
As in previous years, the majority of our complaints in the last year have concerned news and current affairs broadcasts. The reduction in news programming in recent years has no doubt contributed to falling complaints numbers and highlights a concerning trend. It is vital, in the interests of a functioning democracy, that New Zealanders continue to have reliable, trusted and accessible news available to them. The proliferation of online ‘news’ from organisations and individuals that sit outside the BSA or Media Council standards regimes means many people are getting their information from sources that are not bound to uphold any standards, including around accuracy, balance and fairness.
We have observed news media reviewing their procedures and experimenting with ways to improve public trust, which has fallen in recent years and been subject to many studies. News media are not alone and many government, public and private sector agencies have also experienced lower trust levels, particularly since the start of the decade. However, the results of this year’s Verian Public Sector Reputation Index suggest this may be changing, with the BSA receiving its highest trust score in the eight years the survey has been run, and among the most improved ratings overall. Similar improvements have been seen for other public organisations in the sector including the Classification Office and NZ On Air. We at the Authority take this as a sign that we are fulfilling our mandate to provide a robust, transparent and fair complaints process, upholding the standards our communities expect of us.
In our pursuit of continuous improvement we have made changes this year to make our complaints process more accessible and understandable for the public, including videos that explain the basics of our system in plain language, and a rewrite of our complaint forms to make them more user-friendly. We have also updated our guidance on complaints unlikely to succeed, to support broadcasters to respond to complaints in an efficient and pragmatic way.
An external review this year by Associate Professor Peter Thompson, of a range of decisions made under the accuracy standard, confirmed the Authority is applying the standard appropriately and gave some useful guidance that we will take into account in future deliberations. Assoc Prof Thompson noted accuracy is a deceptively complex concept – while most people have strong ideas about what truth and objectivity look like, it is almost impossible for news media to report current affairs from a truly universal standpoint. Factors like framing – whose voices are included, and whose are not – the terminology used, and even the choice of what stories to cover, all introduce elements of subjectivity to the way news is told and received by the audience. One person’s truth is another person’s propaganda and, while it is often straightforward for the Authority to tell one from the other, accuracy complaints can sometimes be more challenging than they appear at first glance.
This year we have continued to receive complaints about reporting on the Israel-Hamas conflict, some of which have been upheld, reinforcing the importance of careful reporting in times of fast-moving and often uncertain events. While broadcasters in New Zealand are entitled to rely on international reports for use in news bulletins, it is still important they check for the most up-to-date information available, and correct the record where events are misreported. Cuts across most local newsrooms have seen news teams under pressure and this can lead to an increased risk of mistakes being made.
At the end of this financial year we farewelled Pulotu Tupe Solomon-Tanoa’i at the conclusion of her term as board member. Pulotu has made a substantial contribution to the Authority in the last three and a half years, and we have been grateful for her wisdom and generosity of spirit. In July 2025, we welcome Karyn Fenton-Ellis MNZM to the board – Karyn comes with an extensive background as a broadcasting presenter and is a director of Te Akau Racing. We are looking forward to working with her.
Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, he toa takitini.
My strength is not as an individual, but as a collective.
Susie Staley, MNZM
Chair
A limited number of print copies are available. To enquire about a print copy, email: info@bsa.govt.nz