Australian news outlets technically may have broken press guidelines when they published live video of the New Zealand mosque attacks, the Australian broadcasting watchdog the Australian Communications and Media Authority ruled. However, ACMA isn’t punishing any outlet, but calling for “a productive conversation with industry.”
ACMA said there was “little regulatory or educative benefit”in ruling against the outlets, the Guardian reported. Outlets in question included Sky News, ABC, SBS and Channels Nine, Seven, and Ten. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, ACMA’s report is “confidential” and only broadcasters have it, but a unnamed “media source” provided parts of the report with the news desk.
“Instead the ACMA considers that this investigation would more usefully prompt a productive conversation with industry about whether its codes are adequately framed to deal with this type of material in the future – in particular, perpetrator-generated, livestreamed extreme violent material,” ACMA’s chair Nerida O’Loughlin said according to the Guardian.
O’Loughlin continued:
“Having reviewed the range of treatments of the alleged perpetrator and survivor footage that was broadcast, the Acma considers that there was some material that raises questions about whether there was compliance with the broadcasting codes of practice,”