Resurge, PBS!

Last October, the late Tony Mallia wrote in The Times that he had found himself "unceremoniously removed" for no reason from PBS in November 1996, soon after Labour was returned to power. The prime minister, Dr Alfred Sant, commissioned Joe A. Grima to write a report on the national station. Somewhat marvellously the task was completed within a week. It could not have been up to much because Dr Sant then called for another report, this time from the ex-chief executive of PBS, the same Mr Mallia who had been shunted out of office.

In his October contribution Mr Mallia pointed out that in 1995 "the station was shackled with debts and problems... no water, electricity and telephone bills had been paid... a loan of Lm1.8 million... to buy new and modern equipment; instead... it was spent on Giochi senza frontiere... the loan is still a millstone around PBS's neck... (it) has already cost PBS about Lm900,000 in interests and not a cent has been repaid... In late 1997... the number of executives and managers (was raised) to 30 with an annual salary of about Lm10,000 each... A number of executives and managers could not even carry out a simple budget exercise..." PBS, in short, was a mess.

In 1998, 2000 and 2001, reports and proposals issued forth like sausages from a mincing machine. These covered every aspect of PBS, from human resources and work practices to organisation and operations. A task force headed by Fr Joe Borg was asked to recommend the best way forward for the creation of an efficient broadcasting system.

Last October, too, Dr Austin Gatt, the minister of Information Technology and Investments (MITI) placed a memorandum before Cabinet. The reform of PBS got under way with the General Workers Union in agreement on the need to restructure. Precious years of opposition to this particular reform had been wasted; so had millions of Maltese liri of the taxpayers' money.

We have come some way from the situation in which PBS had remorselessly ground itself, financially, organisationally, administratively and operationally. A long road lies ahead. The basic problem at PBS, apart from incredible overmanning, is to do with a culture that has dogged the station ever since broadcasting was wrenched from the private sector.

One of the tools it is hoped will help PBS rise from the mediocrity in which it chose to wade is an editorial board operating independently of the board of directors. Its basic responsibility will be to "ascertain that PBS news and programming policy fulfils its public service obligation". It is also responsible, through the programme manager, "for the quality and the content of programmes broadcast on PBS stations whether they are produced in-house or outsourced". Importantly, it will grade proposals submitted for in-house or outsourced programmes and pass on its deliberations to the board of directors.

Make or break

Controversially, the board will, with regard to programming standards, "receive and act on broad policy guidelines set by the minister responsible for broadcasting". This gives the minister a power he ought not to have. We may regard Dr Gatt, not all of us, naturally, as a reasonable enough fellow, but suppose one day there emerges another who has unpalatable designs for broadcasting? Should there be a minister responsible for broadcasting when there exists a Broadcasting Authority?

The head of the editorial board is Fr Borg, whose experience in media communications is second to none on the island. His leadership of the Church's Media Centre, which he set up and developed, displayed a high degree of excellence. He lectures on the subject of the media at the University of Malta. The two other members are Professor Dominic Fenech, Dean of the Faculty of Arts, and, between 1979 and 1983, general secretary of the Malta Labour Party, and Dr Mary Anne Lauri, who lectures in psychology of communications and is a researcher on the effect of media on children. This does not make for a push-over team and, if its talents can be honestly placed at the service of broadcasting alone, a formidable one.

Given his in-depth experience and knowledge of television journalism, given that the work of the editorial board is intimately involved in raising standards, given the crucial contribution the board is committed to make to see that PBS fulfils its public service obligations, membership of the board by a priest only too qualified to serve on it may reasonably be regarded as unexceptional. It was therefore difficult to understand why the Archbishop "could not approve that a priest accepts such a post". It is not as if the man is going to get on to a soap-box and have himself televised as he pronounces political opinion; nor is it as if he is a one-man editorial board. nor is it as if he has espoused a cause that could reflect badly on his vocation. A distinction can surely be made between a priest rendering a public service outside his pastoral responsibilities so long as he fulfils these, too, and one who publicly lashes himself to the mast of a political belief. That it has not been made is unfortunate.

It would have been better for all concerned had the Archbishop flatly ordered Fr Borg not to take up the appointment. By merely opting for a negative by disapproving he may have been appealing to Fr Borg to desist from taking up the post while leaving the decision to him. Fr Borg has taken that decision; we hope for better.

The 12 months after the EU elections will be make or break months. At the end of that period we will have a good idea as to whether PBS has risen from its ashes or remained in its nether-nether land. If it inhabits the latter at the end of a year or two, Fr Borg will doubtless reconsider his position. He took this on because, presumably, he thinks he can make a difference. I happen to believe he will if everybody plays fair.

The point is we need a professional, efficient PBS as a national counter to the two politically-owned TV and radio stations. The chairman of the Broadcasting Authority, Dr Joseph Said Pullicinio, made several good points in the BA's annual report. It was necessary, he noted, for PBS to have a reliable, competent editorial board to establish standards, balance and impartiality in the station's news broadcasts and current affairs programmes.

That relentless old man

We tend to forget, so forcefully has our peripatetic Pope John Paul impressed upon the world his Petrine-Pauline personality, that it was Pope Paul V1 who first took to the air when he went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. His three-day visit captured the imagination of the world. It was on the occasion of this ground-breaking decision that he met Patriarch Athenagoras, the head of the Greek Orthodox Church, "after so many centuries of silence" that had their beginnings in the schism that followed the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439. Will today's youngsters finally witness the reunification of the churches by the time of the 600th anniversary of that Council?

History has a habit of moving in very slow motion when it comes to reconciliation and "fraternal" love among nations and beliefs. Pope John Paul II - 84 last Tuesday - knows this too well. His entire papacy has been a pilgrimage to the four corners of the world. He has seen the separation of East and West dissipated by the hunger for freedom of the multitudes in Eastern Europe, his birthplace in the forefront of the dissolution of the Soviet empire. He has watched the Soviet Union fragment itself with almost centrifugal force into its many parts.

In that return to freedom, in that dismantling, history will acknowledge the role he played. Historians may lock on 1981, and precisely December 13 of that year, as the year in which his papacy and the Polish leader, General Jaruzelski, lifted the Polish question out of Leonid Brezhnev's hands. They did so at the very moment when the Soviet Union was threatening General Jaruzelski that this was "no longer (his) problem" and "bear in mind that we shall never allow interference with the vital interests of our alliance". Nobody but Mr Brezhnev could interpret the Brezhnev doctrine as well as Mr Brezhnev.

Pope John Paul's biographer, Tad Szulc, reminds us that Jaruzelski took responsibility for the imposition of martial law. In essence this was a military coup staged because, the general was to write, it was a "lesser evil"... with any other solution, Poland might have lost everything." During what Jaruzelski described as "a state of war", he conceded that Poland had "lost a lot. But it was not deprived of (future) chances. We opened (these chances) ourselves later".

It was to take time, but with patience and consummate diplomacy, Pope John Paul and, in fairness, the General, led Poland out of the land of Moscow and into the house of Europe. Others followed suit. We have been too casual in our recognition of how historic May the First, 2004, really was, how undreamed of in 1989, when the Warsaw Pact disintegrated. What was clear by then, however, was that we had a Pope whose intense pastoral activity would embrace the world of international affairs.

One has lost count of his countless voyages abroad (Paul) and cannot but regard with some awe his total commitment to the Gospel (Peter). The latter, if not the former, is expected of him, I know, but with what fervour he has announced the Good News to every corner of the world. Nor can one avoid for long his clear answer to God's summon. Speak, Lord, thy servant heareth. And, it seems, continues to hear despite the physical frailty of a man who set out on his Pauline vocation with so healthy a body, so firm a voice, so strong a conviction. The latter continues to shine brightly. He soldiers on and, magnificently, the youth of the world continues to take to its heart this great-grandfather of theirs.

Missing Caravaggio?

Last Tuesday I suffered from withdrawal symptoms. There was no lecture on Caravaggio at Caraffa Stores because Ferdinando Bologna is still recovering and not well enough to travel. Note, however, that next Tuesday, at 7.30 p.m. sharp, doors to Caraffa will be closed as Professor John Spike begins to deliver his talk on "Caravaggio and Still Life in Rome".

In his majestic book, Caravaggio, Spike cites Longhi's conclusion that Caravaggio's Basket of Fruit "marks the birth of the modern still life, definitively stripped of religious or intellectual illusion and ranked on an equal footing with the human figure". Spike is of the opinion that Longhi was "only partially right" and that he was "consciously echoing one of the artist's most startling remarks for that time, which Giustiniani recorded: 'He said it was as much work for him to make a good picture of flowers as one of figures'." Tuesday evening should be a spirited one, but a few more words about withdrawal.

If there are those who suffered from the same symptoms as I did, last week, they have a chance of obtaining relief from their agony this evening at 8.30. Gillian Zammit, accompanied by Rosetta de Battista on the piano, will be singing a classical repertoire for voice and piano as part of the ongoing Caravaggio festivities.

I am the happy owner of a couple of CDs in which works by Giuseppe Balzano have been struck. They are a pleasure to listen to. Balzano was a prolific Maltese composer born six years after Caravaggio's tragic death in 1610. He made it all the way through that baroque century up to 1699 when architecture in the baroque manner had taken off with such a superb flourish. Initially a critic of the form, Jacob Burckhardt would succumb to its virtuosity and recognise it as "the true conclusion and ultimate end of living architecture".

It was by way of that two-volume CD that I listened with growing admiration to Gillian Zammit and Maria Frendo, Dorienne Portelli, Antoinette Camileri, Richard Vendome, Joseph Mercieca and Carlos de Miranda singing Balzano's delightful cantatas. Of these and the Laudate Pueri choir, an ensemble born and bred in Gozo, Malta should be truly proud. So, if Caravaggio withdrawal pains persist, go listen to Ms Zammit's fine, pure voice at Caraffa Stores. The evening's programme tantalisingly promises "Wine, Women and Song".

Who will be first?

Will it be Simon Busuttil or Joanna Drake, Ian Spiteri Bailey or the youthful, attractive and intelligent Roberta Tedesco Triccas who will declare in favour of a reference to God or Christianity in the EU Constitution? So far no candidate from any party contesting the European parliamentary elections has chosen to make such a declaration. I am at a loss as to why this should be the case.

In October 1999, a Special Assembly for Europe of the Synod of Bishops met for three weeks to discuss the theme "Jesus Christ alive in his Church the source of hope for Europe". Pope John Paul summarised the responses of the Synod Fathers faced by the Church in Europe at the beginning of the third millennium in an Exhortation Ecclesia in Europa. I wonder if any of our candidates have heard of this document let alone read it?

The Gospel-soaked document leads inexorably to a final exhortation: "Europe, as you stand at the beginning of the third millennium, Open the doors to Christ! Be yourself. Rediscover your origins. Relive your roots. Down the centuries you have received the treasure of Christian faith. It has grounded your life as a society on principles drawn from the Gospel, and traces of this are evident in the art, literature, thought and culture of your nations. But this heritage does not belong just to the past; it is a project in the making, to be passed on to future generations, for it has indelibly marked the life of the individuals and people who together have forged the continent of Europe." Can this be ignored in the Constitution?

Malta should make its voice heard. This was, after all, our boast before we joined Europe, that tiny Malta would have the same voice as reluctant France, or Germany for that matter.