Watching Xarabank last Friday week, which had the prime minister in the hot(-ish) seat where the only discomfort he got from the questions asked of him was from Peppi Azzopardi’s microscopic projectile spittle, didn’t disappoint those who were expecting to be disappointed.
It wasn’t just because Alfred Sant had declined the invitation to face off Lawrence Gonzi after rubbishing the blustering Xarabank hoi-polloi. Only that day Gonzi had just performed the unthinkable, taking on his former leadership rival as his sidekick on economic affairs after three years in which he effectively let John Dalli drift in the political wilderness. And all Azzopardi could muster for his first knuckleduster question for the PM was… “John Dalli: why was he appointed advisor and not a minister?”
Lawrence Gonzi himself should have been disappointed at being handled so gently. It was almost patronising. There the subject was dropped, and left to One News journalist Matthew Carbone to take up.
But the egregious line of questioning with which Azzopardi opened was devoid of the responsibility a trained broadcaster should have when demanding answers to authentic questions. We were left with the pretence that Xarabank was just extending its mediating role by leaving the questions to the other journalists and its studio audience, as if this could be a convenient way to absolve it from asking questions which would have otherwise put Lawrence Gonzi in an awkward position.
This Peppi Azzopardi did not do. He was the first broadcaster in line with the possibility to drive through the crucial questions on the Dalli appointment, with the powerful medium of live TV at his entire disposal, but he instead gave us one of the worst groaners of the year. He let the PM off the hook with his feeble opener; even after having been slammed by Alfred Sant that same week over the quality of his programme for its “primitive” running order and the studio audience’s heckling. He turned into the moderator that Sant apparently demands of anybody questioning politicians.
Maybe it is true that Xarabank’s bovine studio audience are (I can say ‘bovine’ because people on TV are not real, they are just two-dimensional images of light and sound), a demographically sampled bunch of self-opinionated minds clamouring for the Nobel’s idiots merit award, making this prime-time infotainment slot with-studio-participation-and-scrumptiously-humorous-sing-a-longs the wrong place for a TV debate between party leaders. That bothers Sant a lot, because let’s face it, the man likes Wagner. Gonzi, on the other hand likes dismantling computers and putting them back together. That sounds like a pointless hobby many Xarabank viewers sure appreciate.
Sant instead wants a series of TV debates anchored by somebody selected by the Broadcasting Authority or by a journalists’ association. There is good reason to be wary of moderators who turn out to be lobotomised timekeepers with a speech impediment.
Sant’s list of demands to Xarabank (camera placing, lighting etc) reveals the level of control parties want on all forms of broadcasting, not being content with having their own TV channels; his idea that TV debates take place “by means of an agreement between representatives of the two parties” goes to show how far politicians believe bipartisan consensus should be given paramount consideration; and his choice of journalists not hailing from “entities which have a financial or commercial interest in the media aspects of debates” shows his distrust of the privately-owned media.
Maybe some of his paranoia is justified. But who cares what Sant is paranoid about anyway? Politicians must be questioned and prodded on by responsible journalists to answer to difficult and uncomfortable questions. Peppi Azzopardi did not. Maybe it was too much to expect from him. But TVM viewers deserved better.
When the fact of the matter is that journalists are not doing their job properly… well that’s another issue altogether; maybe you’re watching NET and One TV, where journalists double up as their politicians’ pointy-eared familiars and pixies with pointy hats and pointy fingers pointing accusingly at their interviewees. Sant says little about the splendid job his party employees are making with their parody of journalism.
You’d think bad journalism is automatically dealt a swift death by plummeting TV ratings anyway. And yet it isn’t. Those rising ratings seem to confirm some pathological disorder within us to revel in the junk being thrown at us.
PBS probably tries its hardest to ensure impartiality, but that is already impossible when its formula for survival is linked to some government laboratory’s findings on how not to pour money into anything that cannot return some revenue. But the national TV station is killing debate by entertaining its audience, rather than inform it, while all the political party stations offer are crossfire arguments that serve to play to the audience’s prejudice.
To go into these elections with a moderator chosen by the Broadcasting Authority (itself controlled by the four representatives chosen by the MLP and PN) would be a mistake. To ignore the private media is an even bigger mistake. Leaving it up to the two big party leaders to decide on their own will be to the detriment of the public interest.
Rather than obsessing about impartiality that is of common interest only to the big parties, we need a varied cross-section of responsible and experienced journalists who can control and lead a debate, not give our future prime ministers an easy ride.

Just to preserve the critics’ suspicion that all the media does is ‘say negative stuff’, I am writing this just to ensure that unnecessarily positive coverage has been tainted with some bile. And because I can write this for the childish thrill it gives me in a world of monotone nothingness. And because I’m so envious of them, sure. Tonio Fenech was awarded the Outstanding Young Person of the Year by the Junior Chambers International for (a) being below the age of 40; (b) having been smug enough to enter politics in the first place; and (c) being the finance minister for the past four years. Big deal – in the last four years I’ve paid higher fuel bills, departure taxes galore, worked on public holidays falling on weekends, paid eco-taxes which turned out to be just another consumption tax, and higher VAT on the stuff I like buying: all thanks to this chubby-cheeked childlike smug-faced accountant. Now, where is my bloody award?