Television has been a tool (at times a weapon) in the hands of political parties ever since the inception of Xandir Malta in the mid-1970s. Charlot Zahra and Raphael Vassallo on how the advent of pluralism has intensified, rather than diminished, political propaganda
When, in August 1993, the Labour Party under Alfred Sant began illegal transmissions of an unlicensed television station, Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami was placed in an awkward position.
A few years earlier, he himself had dispatched PN activist Richard Muscat to Sicily to set up Studiorama – a similarly illegal station, envisaged to counter the blatant propaganda broadcast by Xandir Malta under the Labour government of the 1970s.
But though times had changed, in the early 1990s the Nationalist government was nonetheless apprehensive of the pluralism concept: perhaps cognisant of the dangers that a medium as powerful as television could pose in the hands of a political party.
In fact, after the radio “semi-pluralism” of 1992 - when the political parties awarded themselves (and the Church) radio licences, to the exclusion of the entire private sector - Fenech Adami initially resisted a private TV station for the Nationalist Party. It was only after Labour’s electoral victory in 1996 – widely attributed to Super One TV, “regularised” in March 1994 – that the need to counterbalance Labour’s new spin machine was keenly felt in the PN headquarters at Pieta’.
This in turn gave birth to Net TV - and for the past 10 years, local television has been dominated by the two political parties, both because they were for years practically the only entities in Malta to own their own stations; and also because they are Constitutionally empowered to appoint their own representative members to the Broadcasting Authority Board.
Effectively, this has created a unique situation in Europe, whereby the two parties dominating parliament also own their own television stations. This allows both the PN and MLP to regulate the selfsame market in which they are also key competitors. And though this runs directly counter to the spirit of Europe’s competition directives – creating an automatic distortion in the marketplace, whereby the laws governing broadcasting are drawn up by station-owners which have their own vested interests in the matter – nobody, not even the European Commission, seems to recognise this as an injustice.
Xandir Malta - the years of shame Our national acceptance of the status quo may in part be attributable to over 35 years of passive consumption of prpaganda via our TV sets.
During the 1980s, Xandir Malta provided a text-book scenario for total State manipulation of the airwaves. Examples include an unofficial boycott of Eddie Fenech Adami’s name (he was referred to only as “the Opposition leader”; the “accidental” removal of Great Britain from the world map during the 8 o’ clock news; the notorious “Run, Rabbit, Run” incident, to announce the 1981 election result; and perhaps most damning of all, the astonishing announcement, in November 1985, that “Maltese security forces” had successfully stormed a hijacked plane at the Luqa airport, releasing all hostages and bringing the entire nightmarish ordeal to an end.
It was later discovered (mainly through Italian news media) that in actual fact the plane was stormed by Egyptian commandoes... and far from “rescuing the hostages”, over 60 had been killed in the ensuing disaster.
How was it possible to achieve such levels of manipulation? The answer appears to lie in full control of all strategic positions within the newsroom. This Labour achieved through a simple but effective strategy: transferring “unwanted” workers to other departments, or making their lives so miserable that they would leave “of their own free accord.”
Softly does it: the Nationalist method Matters changed considerably after 1987, when the previously unmentionable “Opposition leader” became Prime Minister.
State broadcasting under Fenech Adami ceased to be as blatantly manipulative to the naked eye, and – in a strategy employed also at the Malta Police Force – many of Labour’s key political appointees were even retained under the new management.
Nonetheless, the lessons learnt from the Mintoff years did not go to waste. News standards may never since have dropped quite as low as they had fallen in the mid-1980s... but the PN government nonetheless exercises tight control over sensitive broadcasting positions all the way up to this day.
In 2004, Public Broadcasting Services underwent a controversial restructuring plan, reducing the total number of employees by one-third from 178 to 64, while production of television and radio programmes was farmed out to external producers such as Where’s Everybody? - a production house constantly vilified by the Labour Party for its alleged pro-PN bias.
Only the news and sports bulletins remained in the hands of PBS; and of the 14 journalists previously employed in the PBS newsroom, only three were retained.
But it was the search for a news manager that exposed the paranoia regarding control of the State broadcaster. The PBS selection board’s first choice was former MIC head Carmel Attard, but he refused the post. In second place came veteran employee Charles Flores. However he was told that his application had not been successful. (Flores then successfully pursued his case in front of the Ombudsman.)
A year later, IT Minister Austin Gatt himself selected former Times journalist Vanessa Macdonald to fill in the hot seat, but the appointment was shot down by Castille.
Sylvana Cristina, who had until then been working as programming manager, was promoted to news manager and registered editor after PBS carried out an internal exercise; but in January 2008, on the eve of the March 8 general election, former Times journalist Natalino Fenech was chosen to take her place, in another controversial move that was immediately condemned by the Opposition.
At the same, two additional journalists – Keith Demicoli and Sergio Mallia – were also recruited, the former from Net TV, and the latter from the office of Nationalist Minister George Pullicino, were he worked in PR.
Admittedly, the methods remain a far cry from the often brutal transfer regime that existed in the 1970s and 1980s: but PBS’s critics argue that the overall effect remains the same.
Meanwhile, as the Broadcasting Authority places newer and ever more stringent restrictions on the national broadcaster, the two political stations are allowed to do as they please as a result of a remarkable decision taken by former BA chairman Joseph Said Pullicino, who ruled that the excesss of One and Net TV “balanced each other out”.
The result of this state of affairs has been described as a “jungle”... by the same BA chairman who created the law of the jungle in the first place.
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