Cold reception

How do you guard a person's identity, especially if he is "afraid of repercussions"? One thing is for sure, you do not do it by broadcasting his age, number of siblings, marital status, telling whether or not he has recently switched from being a student to joining the workforce, and going into detail about the very particular plight of one of his parents.

Has the Broadcasting Authority so much to do that a serious breach of ethics such as this from Super One goes uncommented? The fact that this news item was practically lifted from a print medium is neither here nor there, especially since it is easier for most people to listen to the radio while doing something else, than to sit down and read a newspaper, having first purchased it.

On the same lines, I didn't like the way the guests on Bondi+ decided they could take arrogant potshots at Tony Zarb; even the seating arrangements were designed specifically for his discomfiture.

Rosslyn, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, has an exterior replete with Gothic gargoyles and flying buttresses, while inside there are ornate pillars, carvings and an extraordinary ceiling. Owing to its connection with the filming of the controversial The Da Vinci Code, the book with Grail Expectations, it has lately been at the centre of more conjecture than usual - as well as of organised tours where visitors take in the scenery and a tour of the surrounding areas, including a UFO hotspot.

A little of the glitz has rubbed off in connection with the shooting of a few scenes of the film in Malta - but from a totally different 'aspect'.

Surely it was not the brouhaha about the rout in which Fort St Rocco - and the Rinella Movie Park - which made most of the local media shy away from reporting on the filming of a few scenes of the film. After all, when local extras are employed on a film set (girls with curls, no fringes, please; boys with long hair) it is customary to give them an extra five minutes of fame by interviewing at least some of them, if not the stars themselves.

Rosslyn, then, is more than ever nowadays a magnet for those with a taste for the surreal; but Vittoriosa hardly got a look in the local press. This is just one more incident that shows how the local media arbitrarily pick and choose the issues upon which to focus with a jaundiced eye. There was a wealth of controversy here, and almost nobody touched it with a bargepole.

The coverage would have taken time away from the usual blah-blah, which, if not circumlocution around this mess or that conundrum, drags out incidents from a decade ago to re-thrash them.

In a similar vein, I have noted that whenever some local singers do well in contests abroad, even if it's winning the people's vote, they are feted and invited to every programme that could remotely be said to have a connection with culture, entertainment, or what have you. When others triumph, they are only featured in a tiny inch in a corner of a newspaper. Why?

It would seem that the will-she-won't-she saga of Sylvana Cristina as PBS Head of News is finally resolved. Now wouldn't it be nice for all newspaper media critics to be put on the mailing lists of each television and radio station just so that we may be informed about the niceties?

Meanwhile, much has been said about the need for a watershed hour to protect children from television violence, sex and vulgarity. Many broadcasters agree that the pictures on radio are much better than those on television - so what are we going to do about all those novels and short stories, broadcast in the early afternoon, where people get framed for murders they did not commit, others get their head bashed in, and so forth? If a radio happens to be in the family room, where a child is having a snack or doing homework, one cannot very well plug his ears.

Football commentaries on Italian stations often appear to be more lively and informative than local ones. But there is nothing one can do about this, if that is the game you'd like to watch, since it is not the usual practice to screen the same game simultaneously on two channels (a repeat is something else).

Meanwhile, it would be nice to know x'tal-linja sa taqbad, just so you can ghid bye-bye lic-cicca.