Editorial: Beware Viewer!
By Media Matters Member, Don McDonald
Thursday, 05 March 2015
Don McDonald
Things which appear on television, are often blatantly false and misleading.
Take the TVNZ Big Wednesday Lotto draw on 27th November 2013, when the presenter declared, at the end of the draw, that "of course, at least 3.5 million cents including all the luxury prizes are "up for grabs every single week". From time to time, in the course of this weekly presentation she will add statements like "join me as I'll be giving away all the big prizes in just a moment."
I immediately made a formal complaint about this glaring breach of Programming Standards, because the truth is that most of the time, no prize money at all is paid out and the viewing public are being misled into thinking that there is a generous regular weekly distribution of prizes, which is not the case. As a mathematician, I estimate that the biggest prize in any one week is likely to be of the order of $100,000, and more often is something like $20,000.
If all this this is not fraud and misrepresentation on the part of the Lotteries Commission, I don't know what is.
Yet when my complaint reached the Broadcasting Standards Authority, their ruling was that my complaint was "Trivial and Vexacious". Can you believe this? Here is a government appointed body, the Lotteries Commission, exaggerating their prize offering to such an extent that it surely borders on fraud, and the BSA is prepared to allow them to get away with it. This is exploiting the young and the gullible into buying tickets when the odds against winning anything are enormous.
BSA cited in court
The BSA don't like people who complain; it spoils the cosy relationship they have developed over the years with the television channels. Your chances of your complaint succeeding are about as big as your chances of winning Lotto - i.e. next to no chance at all.
Furthermore, the BSA particularly don't like me, after they tried to fine me for wasting their precious time a year or two back, and I took them to court, with the financial support of Media Matters, and WON!
