'Government actions leading to a legitimacy crisis'

The Public Broadcasting Service failed in its mission because of bad faith, as was also the case on the government side which wanted to perpetuate what it believed to be a God-given right to power, Labour MP Alfred Sant told Parliament yesterday.

Speaking during the debate in second reading on the Bill to amend the Broadcasting Act, Dr Sant argued that this was leading to a crisis of legitimacy. He mentioned the Delimara power station and the St Philip Hospital issues as examples of how reality was being thwarted.

National broadcasting was also in crisis because the most valid people had been removed from the station on the pretext of reforms, and those still at PBS were demoralised.

Reference by government speakers to what had happened in broadcasting in the 1970s and 1980s showed their hypocrisy, because similar things had happened in the 1950s and 1960s, 1990s and even today, although using different marketing techniques.

In this context, Dr Sant mentioned how a senior police officer who had been heavily criticised by the PN for his actions under the Labour government in the 1980s had been given various promotions after 1987, and had only been removed from the Police Corps by the 1996 Labour government.

Effectively PBS was today discredited because it was similar to state broadcasting in Zimbabwe and served as a tool in the power game. PBS was embroiled in private interests who had their own agenda, including the continued support of the government of the day.

Dr Sant said that what had been wrong in the 1970s and 1980s was still wrong today, although it was perpetuated through a different mechanism.

He said that when he was last interviewed by TVM somebody had hastily prepared a scroll to counteract his criticism. This was a clear sign of manipulation. PBS was colonised by the ruling power structure.

He believed that the Labour government of 1996-1998 had shown how PBS could come out of this rut when it had retained certain programmes which had been broadcast under the previous Nationalist government. In one year, PBS had recovered a substantial part of the viewership which had previously been lost to Italian stations.

After 1998 this had changed and the Labour Party had been heavily disadvantaged in the run-up to the EU referendum in 2003.

National broadcasting should reflect the promotion of culture, giving correct information and education, strengthening the national identity, providing balance and clearly supporting the creative arts.

Concluding, Dr Sant said the government's main aim was partisan. The crux to solve this dilemma was to accept that one could only work in good faith in order to take fair and transparent decisions to move forward.

Nationalist MP Ċensu Galea said the opposition had used the discussion on the implementation of an EU directive on broadcasting by launching an attack on state broadcasting, conveniently giving the impression that the House was amending laws on state broadcasting.

Dr Sant had given the impression that it was only the party in government that had been allotted airtime to the detriment of the opposition. This was incorrect.

Malta had several stations which broadcast throughout the national territory or even regionally, and each was responsible for ensuring the truthfulness of what it aired. This responsibility was more onerous on political party stations.

Producers should be fair and just, and respect their audience. Yet some show hosts actually thought their audience was gullible and consequently sought to send out messages which did not reflect the whole truth or which were outright lies.

Some programmes often contained malicious intent to tarnish others. There was no immediate and effective control on the content being transmitted, and when one sought to seek redress, one got entangled in interminable, ineffective judicial proceedings.

Mr Galea argued that a court judgment, delivered after the lapse of time from a broadcast and where the court provided only a small amount of compensation, did not amount to an effective remedy because the effect of the libellous message would have already died out.

Concluding, he spurred the House to consider introducing libel proceedings which were to be decided in one sitting. Speaking at length about the vicissitudes of broadcasting under Labour governments up to 1987 and between 1996 and 1998, Francis Zammit Dimech (PN) said that there was a great difference between broadcasting then and today, under a PN government. There had been a time when nobody could look at state broadcasting as a faithful source of information.

If Malta today had a heritage of clear principles of impartiality and objectivity, even in the filming of events, and a fitting treatment of political controversy even through the allotment of time, it was all the merit of Nationalist administrations. New mechanisms that Labour had never dreamed of, or even ridiculed, were now taken for granted. These included pluralism in broadcasting.

No serious analysis of broadcasting could be complete without this historic oversight, said Dr Zammit Dimech. The more one avoided the truth of the past, the more opportunity for the bad times to be brought back.

The opportunity existed today of further evolving broadcasting to serve the country better. The currently available sources of information made the need for political stations much less felt, but it would be good for the parties to discuss objectively their direct roles in broadcasting.

There was now a much wider scope to build on serious, professional and investigative journalism, discussion programmes and other forms of objective information to the public.

The Broadcasting Authority should allow political stations to balance each other out, rather than expecting PBS to do it. Also, the effects of broadcasting could not be mixed with those of the printed word.

Dr Zammit Dimech said the country should continue to build on structures. It was not acceptable for any station to hide behind the political screen and say whatever it liked about anybody.

Public broadcasting must be a pillar of the promotion of culture, but not in such a high-brow manner as to discourage people from following it. It must always combine the promotion of art and culture with justifying its existence on communicating well.

It must be a supporter of numerous values, protecting the vulnerable in a way that was always mature.

One very important principle to be kept in mind was that facts were sacred; it was only opinions that were free.

Broadcasting would always continue to be a challenge, but it must develop further the crucial faculty of all listeners to tell good from bad and true from false, concluded Dr Zammit Dimech.