KEY POINTS:
It's hard to think of something more satire-worthy than the proposal by Parliament's standing orders committee to ban the use of television footage shot in the House for the purposes of "satire, ridicule and denigration".
Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen has accused the news media of trying to
portray the restrictions as "some sort of fascist state where the heroic media of New Zealand are being denied the right to lampoon politicians". Coming from the House's reigning master of the scathingly savage putdown, this seems particularly rich and, like much of his rhetoric, it transparently avoids the issue at hand by seeking to exaggerate the concerns expressed so as to minimise them.
Plainly, the proposed rules do not amount to a full-frontal attack on the freedom of the news media to make any satirical comment on the performance of politicians. But they are cut from the same cloth as such draconian measures.
The proposal is that, when Parliament this month begins televising its own proceedings, restrictions will apply to all filming - including that done by news organisations. Footage may not be used for the purposes of political advertising or election campaigning (except with the permission of all the members shown in that footage); for satire, ridicule or denigration; or for commercial sponsorship or commercial advertising.
It is debatable whether democracy is under serious attack from a rule preventing the marketers of cars or spaghetti or toothpaste from manipulating footage of our elected representatives for their commercial ends. It is a little harder to see why an MP's behaviour in the house should not constitute legitimate material for an election advertisement later. But with that provision the politicians seek only to restrict their own behaviour; it is another matter entirely to control comment in a free society by ordering that images gathered in our House of Representatives not be used in ways that mock the people pictured.
Political satire, of course, looks very different to the satirist and the satirised - never mind the audience in whose interests both purport to work. Yet unsurprisingly the nation's news editors won't be the ones deciding whether or not a particular usage constitutes satire, ridicule and denigration; rather, the Speaker and Privileges Committee will make the call. In other words, the politicians allegedly aggrieved by news media treatment - and doesn't that mean all politicians all the time? - will rule on their grief level. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to spot the problem with that model.
This country does not have a long tradition of political satire, particularly of the cutting variety. If anything the news media, and in particular the state broadcaster, take politicians a good deal more seriously than they deserve. Such an approach is a welcome antidote to the poisonous talkback discourse that treats all those in public life as lazy and overpaid when they are, for the most part, neither. But it bears repeating that the function of the media in a democracy is to hold politicians to account for their behaviour, particularly, though not only, in the House.
The standing orders committee does not - yet - seek to restrict the media's rights to providing commentary along with bald reportage. But the new rules seek to dictate - at least with respect to footage, gathered with public money, of publicly elected officials paid from the public purse - the tone of that commentary. That must be resisted. If politicians wish to escape satire, denigration and ridicule they need only refrain from behaviour that cries out for such treatment - and not move to make it illegal.
