Abstract
The article has two aims. First it explores how winners of wider discursive battles over ‘public interest’ and ‘freedom of speech’ have increasingly shaped national interpretations of children’s media rights in the western world. This article argues that the winners of these discursive battles are powerful in terms of shaping children’s media provision. The second part of the article focuses on the particular challenges facing policymakers and broadcasters in New Zealand as they go about defining new public service outputs for children. This nation of four million inhabitants is in the middle of a difficult experiment. The Labour Government, elected in 1999 (and again in 2002), has declared an intention to claw back public service outputs on its state-owned broadcaster TVNZ, after a decade in the deregulated media marketplace.
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