Leaning to freedom in face of flood

Now more than ever, an official who scrutinises content on behalf of an entire country will feel like they are trying to hold back a flood.

In New Zealand, that person is the Chief Censor. Even the title sounds archaic, like Grand Inquisitor. You picture an elderly man or woman in a small room with a pair of scissors and a disapproving expression.

In fact, the outgoing Chief Censor, David Shanks, is on record as saying that a censor should always put freedom first.

‘‘If you don’t have to censor, then don’t,’’ he argued. ‘‘Freedom of expression, freedom of speech: these are precious rights.’’

The vast majority of New Zealanders would agree and it is to Shanks’ credit that his five years in the role have not been marked by the unpopular censorship decisions made by his predecessors. Older readers might recall an ugly censorship stoush in the early 1990s when a previous Chief Censor, Jane Wrightson, pulled a film about a serial killer from the New Zealand International Film Festival.

There are different challenges now than boundary-pushing art films or pornographic magazines. There is the internet, against which Shanks and others in similar roles overseas are fighting a losing battle.

In an exit interview with Stuff this week he said ‘‘we haven’t got a healthy internet’’. The trend lines tell him things will get worse, not better.

Much of the content that worried Shanks over the past few years has not been the kind of material that usually causes problems for censors. Again, we are not talking about pornography or horror. The toughest call Shanks had to make in his five years came after the March 15, 2019 terror attack, and it involved real-life horror.

Shanks banned the video filmed by the Christchurch terrorist, which was streamed live to Facebook and widely shared. He followed that with the less obvious decision to ban the terrorist’s so-called manifesto.

But you cannot ever fully ban anything from the internet and both the video and the manifesto still circulate. By August 2019, the manifesto had been translated into 15 languages and translators were especially active in Russia and Ukraine. In another demonstration of the internet’s reach, the terrorist’s online radicalisation will now form part of the coroner’s inquest into the attacks.

In February 2022, Shanks banned a so-called documentary about the terror attacks, which claimed they were a ‘‘false flag’’ incident, meaning they were staged for political purposes. The offending documentary included long portions of the original video and was promoted during the Wellington occupation, itself a festival of disinformation.

Another notable event during Shanks’ time as Chief Censor was his reclassification of the controversial Netflix series 13

Reasons Why. Those under 18 could watch the series only in the company of a parent. But it is likely that few teenagers observed the rule.

Given the power and reach of streaming services, and the internet more generally, a degree of futility now surrounds the role of a Chief Censor.

Shanks has said the current framework is outdated and no longer fit for purpose. The Government agrees and has launched a major review of content regulation. But as with its failed attempt to define and outlaw hate speech, the Government is at risk of being heavy-handed.

The definition of ‘‘harm’’ outlined by the Department of Internal Affairs is very broad, extending beyond harm to individuals and communities to ‘‘harm to wider society’’, which ‘‘might look like individuals or communities losing trust in, or access to, key public institutions such as the legal, health and education systems, freedoms of identity and expression, and democratic participation’’.

There is scope for the squashing of dissenting opinions in that final section. We must heed Shanks’ words about always erring on the side of freedom over censorship.