{"id":656855,"date":"2026-05-08T03:10:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:10:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/656855\/"},"modified":"2026-05-08T03:10:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-08T03:10:26","slug":"bsa-clears-scotty-stevenson-over-deleting-tins-cricket-drinking-joke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/656855\/","title":{"rendered":"BSA clears Scotty Stevenson over \u2018deleting tins\u2019 cricket drinking joke"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joseph Brownlee Smith, who made the complaint, argued the broadcast promoted irresponsible drinking and brought the cricket club into disrepute.<\/p>\n

\"BroadcasterBroadcaster Scotty Stevenson (left) was found to not have promoted socially irresponsible drinking during a Black Caps test in December. Photo \/ Photosport<\/p>\n

He also said New Zealand is impacted by a binge-drinking culture and state broadcaster TVNZ had a responsibility to not endorse this behaviour, particularly to younger viewers.<\/p>\n

The BSA<\/a> found the televised segment did amount to the \u201cadvocacy of alcohol consumption\u201d, but it was considered socially responsible in the context of a live sports broadcast.<\/p>\n

It also said the broadcast was aimed mainly at an adult audience, with viewers aged from 5 to 17 making up less than 2% of the audience according to ratings data.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not consider their comments, which were light-hearted and appeared intended as humorous, amounted to genuine advocacy of excessive alcohol consumption,\u201d the BSA said in their decision.<\/p>\n

The watchdog said co-commentator Mark Richardson also made a counterpoint to Stevenson\u2019s comments by disapproving of \u201call-nighters\u201d and cheering a team member who had gone to work instead of attending the match.<\/p>\n

Other complaints around privacy and balance were rejected, with the BSA finding the team\u2019s activities did not constitute a \u201ccontroversial issue of public importance\u201d and no private information was disclosed about the cricketer mentioned during the broadcast.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joseph Brownlee Smith, who made the complaint, argued the broadcast promoted irresponsible drinking and brought the cricket club…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[1466,64,63,42665,26127,317603,35149,317608,317604,740,317606,96165,1635,5405,1899,90378,275124,47026,8936,219664,317605,90377,85,197960,317607,39834,8281],"class_list":["post-656855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-about","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-broadcaster","tag-broadcasting","tag-bsa","tag-bunch","tag-casually","tag-clears","tag-cricket","tag-deleting","tag-drinking","tag-fans","tag-found","tag-have","tag-irresponsible","tag-joke","tag-joked","tag-over","tag-promoted","tag-scotty","tag-socially","tag-sports","tag-stevenson","tag-tins","tag-watchdog","tag-when"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}