The hole truth

Sacharissa Cripslock became a reporter for the Ankh-Morpork Times, ironically after having originally gone to the newspaper's office to complain about the invention of moveable type... perhaps because she has 'the ability to think in headlines'.

She downsizes articles to half their size when editing - by removing all the adjectives, and has a knack for asking ambiguous questions that make for great copy.

That is the way things work in Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where the land's first newspaper was founded by one William de Worde. It is quite similar to the way the Maltese media works.

Last May, The Times reported that the Prime Minister had requested the management of Public Broadcasting Services to withdraw an application to demolish the existing premises in Guardamangia. This means the buildings now going up will be tacked onto the existent buildings.

I have no problem with the fact that the place is listed as a 'broadcasting landmark' - however, wasn't the Opera House a 'cultural landmark' left derelict for over half a century?

And of course here I must trot out my suggestion that once the place is rebuilt, we can stop taking part in the Eurovision Song Contest once and for all, and hold our own international contest... something that ought to have been done in the Mediterranean Conference Centre, but was not.

This make-do and mend attitude is one that does not only exist at PBS, but also across the board in the local media. This includes both professionalism, now spread thinly because of liberalisation, and also the proficiency in English and Maltese of these presenters and producers, sometimes recruited, I am sad to say, straight from University.

The other day, for instance, in one of the cookery slots that required preparing the filling for a pie, the presenter asked the (foreign) chef: "Who don't like figs, he can use dates?" For an infinitesimal second, he appeared to wince - and then he replied to the question.

And while Santa Claus was complaining of Sleigh Lag, another section of the press was explaining to us that, paradoxically, it was the Media Centre series Five 06 that had raised the hackles of the Commissioner for Children, Carmen Zammit, in her recent statement wherein she chastised local production houses and television stations for not cherishing children.

I had assumed that what was cited as "concern over the negative and inappropriate portrayal of children on television programmes" alluded to the fact that children are treated as mere objects when invited to recordings of television programmes in non-participatory roles, or the fact that others, when tolerated, are allowed to sing and dance or otherwise perform wearing clothing that made them look like a paedophile's dream.

The main thrust of the statement was that the aforementioned series made young ladies in residential care, already bearing the stigma of being there, appear in a bad light.

Frankly, I cannot understand the fuss the Foundation for Social Welfare Services made about this patently fictitious series, either; the plot is as full of holes as the sieve people born on December 24 have to count, so that they do not became a Gawgaw, and indeed sometimes verges on tragi-comedy.

A trip to some places of entertainment indicates it is definitely not the girls in residential care, who have a curfew, who are behaving badly. Speaking of curfews - how is it that some of the pseudo-residents get to break the curfew so easily, when at other times, the script involves disciplining the girls for tiny infringements of rules?

Be that as it may - I wish all girls, in all types of residential care, are given mandatory adequate schooling until legal school-leaving age. This could be an interesting topic for a documentary, or a discussion programme, rather than a make-believe scenario.

This applies to children who are not in residential care, too: hands up all those teachers who heave a sigh of relief when so-and-so is absent from class.

Ms Zammit rightly says the Broadcasting Authority is all out to promote social consciousness and responsibility, and ensuring that programmes were in compliance with existent broadcasting laws.

Alas, this sometimes means that the BA stands in front of a television screen, stopwatch in one hand and dictionary in the other, trying to differentiate between subliminal and blatant advertising. Both the former, and micro-breaches of the time limits of the latter, are heavily penalised, again and again.

However, other concerns, such as the low-quality productions in which the viewing public is treated as a nincompoop, or overly-biased news bulletins, are allowed.

Ending the year on a sardonic 'note' is a news item I would have included in a bulletin I would have compiled, instead of several things I could mention, but will not, this being the season of goodwill and all that jazz.

In the meantime, unidentified private collector paid $100,000 for a smashed guitar from the late grunge rocker Kurt Cobain, originally swapped with punk rocker Sluggo of The Grannies and Hullabaloo.

Smashed and held together with duct tape, with Cobain's writing on it, the guitar has novelty value... because most broken Nirvana guitars were no longer recognisable, having ended up as 'little slivers and fragments'.

television@timesofmalta.com