Midweek Mediawatch

In this episode of Midweek Mediawatch, host Emil is joined by broadcasting legend Phil Vine as a stand-in for Colin Peacock, who is away due to a family bereavement. The discussion opens with a landmark decision by New Zealand’s Broadcasting Standards Authority (BSA), confirming its jurisdiction over online content hosted by broadcaster Sean Plunkett—specifically in response to his description of Māori tikanga as 'mumbo-jumbo.' The move has sparked fierce backlash from figures like Winston Peters and Laura McClure, who call it fascist and demand the BSA’s abolition, while the Free Speech Union criticizes the agency as outdated. The conversation then shifts to two major U.S. court rulings against Meta and Google, where juries found the tech giants liable for enabling harm to children, including mental health damage and sexual exploitation. These verdicts are likened to the tobacco litigation of the 1990s, with the New Mexico case securing injunctive relief—potentially forcing structural changes to platform design. Phil Vine highlights the 'latency' strategy proposed by Tristan Harris and Asa Raskin as a subtle but powerful tool to disrupt the attention economy by slowing page loads. The episode also covers the underreported war in Lebanon, where over 1,100 have died and journalists have been killed in Israeli strikes, raising urgent questions about the legal status of war correspondents. The segment ends with a cultural moment: Tova O'Brien’s debut on TVNZ Breakfast, where her use of terms like 'iterative' and 'pistor' went viral, drawing comparisons to Kim Hill and earning praise for her fearless, unpredictable style.