Anti-tobacco Lobby Demands TV Censorship
The Dominion Post is reporting this morning (Jan 20, pA3, not online) that the Smokefree Coalition is lobbying the Film Commission and NZ on Air to withhold funding from productions that “overstate or glamorise smoking”.
A ban would probably include TV3’s hit show Outrageous Fortune, which has received more than $22 million in NZ on Air funding and repeatedly featured its starts, including lead actress Robyn Malcolm, smoking.
This demand for withholding of state funding is a classic example of ‘censorship by privilege’ - the showing of smoking on TV would not be banned (direct censorship), but the state would favour programmes that toed the politically-correct line by funding them at the expense of others. Not PC posted an excellent article on just this topic back in December: “The establishing of an establishment” - a different kind of censorship.
NZ on Air active chief executive Bernard Duncan said it was unlikely the agency could ban smoking because that would influence editorial content, but warnings were a possibility.
Duncan has got it right. State funding of the arts, if it is to occur, must be done with a neutral point of view. Anything else would constitute censorship by privilege. Funding decisions must be made on the basis of artistic merit and other such considerations, not to push the values of a political lobby group.
