So, the Broadcasting Authority (BA) is not dead after having committed a classical ‘felo da se’, as many had thought. It is back from the dead and our toothless broadcasting watchdog is baring its gums!
Suddenly the media is full of reports of action being taken by the Authority following television broadcasts that someone has deemed to be in bad taste or politically incorrect. Some three weeks ago, complaints about a fashion photo shoot staged at the Santa Maria Addolorata Cemetery and televised on TVM prompted the BA to accuse the producers of the programme of ‘bad taste’. As a member of the Authority was reported to have complained, it did seem that the issue was subjected to ‘trial by the media’ even before the Authority could pronounce itself on the matter. Frankly, although some shots could be considered as a bit ‘risqué’, I think that this was a case of much ado about nothing.
Then we had the case of a vertically challenged person taking part in a competition as a member of the ‘uglies’ team vying with the ‘beauties’ team – an idea obviously plagiarised from Mediaset’s ‘Ciao Darwin’. Even though there were no complaints from the public, the BA felt that it had to intervene as this fact on its own seemed to imply that being short was equated with being ugly! In the words of the person whose dignity was being ‘defended’ by the Authority: “I do not think I am ugly. I just did it to have a laugh with my friends and I got lots of positive feedback. But I definitely do not feel disabled. I can do the same things as everyone else. And, if I am ugly, it is not because I am short.”
The political correctness of the Broadcasting Authority seems a bit awry to me, and I concur with the programme’s producer who was reported to have told the BA: “What is the alternative? Telling him he cannot participate in the programme because people will be offended that he calls himself ugly? Or putting him with those who think they are beautiful?”
As if these two cases idiotically ‘investigated’ by the Broadcasting Authority were not enough, last Sunday we read the news that the BA rapped a game show broadcast on TVM because one of the participants, a poker player, spoke about the game without ‘adequately highlighting the dangers of gambling’. This time the complainants were the Social Policy Ministry and the Foundation for Social Welfare services.
Now playing poker is not just a matter of gambling. It involves a battle of wits that anyone who cannot keep a ‘poker face’ cannot engage in. One can therefore understand why there are high level poker competitions in the real world. At least I do, as I was never good at it and had to give it up quite early in my youth! It is not even a game of chance such as ‘Super Five’: a game with draws that are broadcast live on television. There were never any moans about, this either from the two bodies complaining about the mention of poker, or from the Broadcasting Authority itself! The mind boggles.
But the BA also pointed out other instances of ‘bad taste’ in the same programme: a participant was introduced as ‘Nessie’, a nickname earned when his friends confused him with the Loch Ness monster when seeing him naked; someone even said that he asked his girlfriend to return to Malta from modelling abroad because there would be consequences; while another participant, claiming to have been a hyperactive child, jokingly recounted an anecdote from is childhood! Wow! What a brave new world!
What is the world of broadcasting coming to in Malta? Surely these ‘comments’ in the BA’s monitoring report reflect the ridiculously puritan and outdated mentality of whoever wrote them, more than the ‘bad taste’ of the programme.
This sudden flurry of rapping of programmes by the Broadcasting Authority came in just three weeks, and – wonder of wonder – they were all directed at programmes broadcast by the state televisions station, PBS. Is PBS the Broadcasting Authority’s favourite – and more convenient – whipping boy, while the stations owned by the two main political parties are only reprimanded and fined when their commercial breaks are longer than stipulated by the rules? Why does the Broadcasting use the Nelson’s eye for the ‘bad taste’ in these stations while reserving all its fire and brimstone for broadcasts on the state TV station?
Was the photo shoot at the cemetery more in ‘bad taste’ than the way ‘One News’ not so long ago reported the scene at Maghtab where a woman had died in a riding accident and her body was still on the ground?
And how is it that the Broadcasting Authority, which is suddenly so sensitive about vertically challenged persons being considered ‘ugly’, about stupid nicknames, about a slight reference to the perils of modelling abroad and about a corny joke on an allegedly hyperactive childhood sees nothing wrong when the Labour Party station uses its television news bulletins as a political character assassination ploy with the same allegation being broadcast repeatedly as the first news item in some ten consecutive days, as if nothing else was happening in the world?
Such comparisons – odious as they might be – bring into question the seriousness of the recent Broadcasting Authority crusade against ‘bad taste’ in programmes of light entertainment value on the state broadcasting station. It makes me suspect that this flurry of ‘reports’ is simply a stratagem to ‘broadcast’ the idea that the Broadcasting Authority is doing its duty, when in fact it continuously fails miserably to do so in the case of news bulletin and current events programmes on the television stations owned by the political parties.
At the risk of being accused of repeating myself over and over again (just like One News bulletins) I again feel I have to point out that the Broadcasting Authority is shirking from its duty with the excuse that the programmes of the radio and television stations owned by the PN and the PL balance each other out from a political point of view – a notion that has completely failed the Maltese public.
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 – the ‘bad taste’ that it is so eager to perceive in stupid little things broadcast on PBS but then completely ignores in other, far more serious circumstances.
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Some three weeks ago, complaints about a fashion photo shoot staged at the Santa Maria Addolorata Cemetery and televised on TVM prompted the BA to accuse the producers of the programme of ‘bad taste’. As a member of the Authority was reported to have complained, it did seem that the issue was subjected to ‘trial by the media’ even before the Authority could pronounce itself on the matter. Frankly, although some shots could be considered as a bit ‘risqué’, I think that this was a case of much ado about nothing.
