All sides appear to agree that the current broadcasting scenario needs a radical shake-up, both with regard to the national station PBS, as well as the politically-owned stations set up in the mid-1990s. MaltaToday asks pundits from local political parties what they think is wrong with the state of broadcasting today
BA shirking its duties
Michael Falzon
Maltese broadcasting has been in a shambles ever since February 1975, when the General Workers’ Union illegally took over the stations of the only broadcasting contractor in Malta.
Admittedly, we then had a somewhat anomalous situation, with the national broadcasting station owned by a foreign company. In a normal situation, a decent law-respecting government would have started negotiations with the owners to nationalise the system and pay them compensation. Instead, Mintoff used the GWU to take over the broadcasting company in a ‘cowboy’ way, and this led to a period where abuses in broadcasting were the order of the day.
Much has been written about these abuses - that included boycotting Eddie Fenech Adami’s name – and the PN in Opposition had to wage many a court battle; once ending with being given its rights almost a year after a report of one of Fenech Adami’s speech was butchered by the state broadcaster that had a monopoly status.
So it was only natural for the PN in government to introduce pluralism in broadcasting. The problem is that this has led to radio and television stations owned by the two main political parties – a unique situation in Europe. This, in turn, gave rise to new abuses, such as the use of the television news bulletins and current affairs programmes to harass political opponents instead of broadcasting anything newsworthy. In one particular instance, I was a victim of this harassment with an alleged breach of ethics on my part being the first item on the One News bulletin for 10 consecutive days, as if nothing else was happening in the world.
Faced with this travesty of what news should be, the Broadcasting Authority sits back, shirking from its duty with the excuse that the programmes of the radio and television stations owned by the PN and the MLP balance each other out from a political point of view. But this is not just a matter of the political balance that is required by the Constitution. It is really a matter of broadcasting standards that the Authority is duty bound to uphold, as no broadcasting station should be allowed to act as if news bulletins and current affairs programmes are nothing but a crude political weapon in the hands of its political masters.
I have no doubt that the time has come for another upheaval in Maltese broadcasting. We need a radical shake up in the composition of the Broadcasting Authority which has been for donkey’s years, made up of a Chairman and two persons nominated by each of the two main parties, often erroneously referred to as party representatives. This is simply a convention originating from a decision made by George Borg Olivier in the sixties and that has developed into a veritable tradition. No change in the Constitution is needed for a change in this direction.
The Constitution simply says that the Broadcasting authority ‘shall consist of a chairman and such number of other persons not being less than four as may be prescribed by any law for the time being in force in Malta.’ And that ‘the members of the Broadcasting Authority shall be appointed by the President, acting in accordance with the advice of the Prime Minister given after he has consulted the Leader of the Opposition.’
The traditional sharing of the ‘spoils’ between the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition has undermined the very nature of the Broadcasting Authority and has turned it into a political tug-of-war in which the Chairman simply acts as referee.
We should also drop the idea that the stations owned by the two main political parties balance each other out - a concept that is written in the Broadcasting law but which may well be unconstitutional. The problem, of course, is that the Constitution was overtaken by events. The way it was worded did not envisage broadcasting pluralism; much less the idea of political parties owning broadcasting stations.
The root of the problem may well be the abuses of the past but the solution intended to stop those abuses has led to new abuses of the present. Clearly the Constitutional and legal framework on broadcasting need to be revised and revamped in the light of the negative side effects that pluralism – which is here to stay – has wrought.
Michael Falzon is a former Nationalist Minister
No institutional autonomy
Evarist Bartolo
Our national broadcasting station, PBS, continues to be controlled by the party in government: as it has always been, either subtly or crudely, since Independence 45 years ago.
Even formally, PBS has no institutional autonomy. The major decision makers – the governing board, the editorial board and the head of news – are handpicked and appointed directly by the party in government. So whatever their expertise and qualifications might be, an essential ingredient is that they are loyal to the PN and will express this loyalty every day in the exercise of their functions. When it recruited the present head of news the PN government did not even bother to issue a public call for applications.
Government controls also the budget of PBS through an annual contribution to help it carry out its public service obligation in news and current affairs. To make matters worse, the main current affairs programmes have been farmed out, mainly to “Where’s everybody?” – a company that not only enjoys excellent relations with the PN, but is also granted a lot of public contracts in other areas of government activities and so its dependence on the PN government for its survival is total.
Given such a situation it is to be expected that PBS is failing dismally in its duties to carry out the task set by the April 2004 National Broadcasting Policy: “it is only PBS that can guarantee news and current affairs programmes presented in a balanced and impartial way solely based on news value criteria.”
The same policy document five years ago recommended that “steps have also to be taken so that PBS will be more and more looked at as the national broadcaster - that is the broadcaster that will represent and fairly treat different views and values present in our society.”
The opposite has happened to ensure that news and current affairs content is mostly shaped to fit in with the PN agenda. The Opposition and the rest of civil society are treated unfairly. Views and voices that are deemed uncomfortable for the PN government are either suppressed or granted only a feeble presence.
Together with a generous communications budget out of taxpayers’ money to manage its image, the PN government uses PBS as one of its tools to manage popular opinion. PBS’ political reporting does not subject the PN government to the bright lights of scrutiny. Nor is it about the impartial presentation of facts. Its main mission is to feed its audience the version of what is happening that reflects well on the government. Issues and views that reflect badly on government are seriously under reported, if at all. Bad news is covered up and every step is taken to minimize the perception that the government is not doing its job.
The failings of PBS are the failings of our democratization process. The substance of democracy in Malta is more fragile than we think; freedom of expression is still weakened by the control mechanisms of government. Although we have the semblance of a multi-party democracy, a free media system and a more vocal civil society, the country is being run like a one party state.
If we are to have an authentic democratic and open society, concrete steps have to be taken to liberate PBS from government control and allow it to grow and a flourish as a vigorous democratic space to nurture the diversity that is struggling to exist within our society. Once PBS becomes truly the station with which we can all identify, there will be no reason for the partisan stations to continue operating in their present state.
Then we can also concentrate on carrying out the necessary changes forced upon the traditional TV and radio stations by the internet and other new communications technologies. Unless we change our traditional broadcasting it will become increasingly obsolete and irrelevant for larger sections of the population. We must crate news web portals with interactive and convergent technology if our broadcasting is to have a future.
Evarist Bartolo is a Labour MP and shadow tourism minister
Broadcasting ‘free for all’... for some
Ralph Cassar A simple request to be able to buy airtime on a private TV station. The answer? Yes, but the programme has to be ‘balanced’. The Broadcasting Authority expects Alternattiva Demokratika to ‘balance’ one measley programme when it permits a free for all on the PN and PN TV stations. The control of the TV airwaves in Malta is in the hands of just two groups - not even Silvio Berlusconi has the free hand PN and PL have here to transmit pure, unadulterated propaganda.
The Broadcasting Authority, made up of PN and PL representatives, uses the puerile argument that the PN and PL stations ‘balance each other’, in the process failing to address the blocking of any other opinion or news story that might be inconvenient to both of them.
Some examples of the total laissez-faire on ONE and NET in the run up to the European Parliament election. NET TV went as far as to interviewPN candidates during the news - yes, candidates where invited one by one, on different days, in the studio to have a chat with the newscaster. The news bulletin is so partisan that the section dedicated to the EP election is introduced and closed by a graphicshowing the PN billboard with its parade of candidates jostling for attention in their garish ties. Party activities are broadcast and repeated ad nauseum. During the breakfast show PN candidates show up to ‘analyse’ the newspapers. The parade of PN candidates continues on a particluar discussion programme ‘Kontro eżami’.
Switch channel to ONE. The usual discussion programmes go into
election mode: Bla Agenda parades PL candidates; Six-o-6 gives us the opportunity to meet the candidates again, the PL ones of course. Then we have the Sunday sermons broadcast repeatedly. Adding up all these programmes mean hours of propaganda on NET and ONE.
That’s not enough for some. PN’s Paul Borg Olivier moaned about the time allocated to his party on the national TV station for political broadcasts organised by the Broadcasting Authority. Pumping out propaganda on NET is not enough it seems.
The free for all on ONE and NET is no problem, just as long as ‘balance’ is maintained during one programme produced by AD. Ralph Cassar is PRO of Alternattiva Demokratika
What others have said:
“It does not make sense that the BA regulates the editorial content on the PBS news while giving a free hand to political party stations. This is not fair. How can it allow both party stations to manipulate the news simply because they balance each other out? We should first and foremost protect the citizen who watches the news from manipulation.” Charlo’ Bonnici, PN backbencher
“PBS, the national broadcaster, never invited us on any of their programmes. And obviously both Net and One TV ignored us completely. So we had to pay to go on Smash TV… and then, by law, we have to invite representatives of the other parties for the sake of balance. So from the programme we have paid for ourselves, we only have one third of the airtime to make our own point. Is this serious? Come on! You can’t even call this a Mickey Mouse country, because Mickey Mouse will get offended...” Josie Muscat, chairman of Azzjoni Nazzjonali
If one has the impression that the members (of the Broadcasting Authority board) only protect the interests of the parties which nominated them, it is not necessarily correct. We must not give the impression that the board meetings of the BA are a tug of war between the parties. It hasn’t been like that. Joseph Scicluna, BA chairman
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