The Graffiti Movement, Alternattiva Demokratika Youths, Zminijietna and Moviment Azzjoni Xellug decided to organise a protest against what they consider to be the sorry state of democracy in Malta. They called on the masses to wake from their slumber, break the chains that enslave them and vociferously protest before they plonk themselves in front of their TV sets for the World Cup matches. Some newspapers gave the event front page coverage while some TV stations gave a longish kind of coverage mentioning the protest in their headlines.

Was this a new kind of event? No, it happens every year with the same monotony, faces and choreography.

Did the masses respond? No, there are more syllables in the titles of the four so-called movements which organised the protest than there were people protesting.

Should it have been given such massive coverage? In my opinion, definitely not. I refer to "massive coverage" since I think so kind of coverage they should have been given.

Why was it given such coverage? There are, I think, two main reasons: NGOs are the untouchables of present society and the market driven concept of the news has taken over most media.

Free rides for NGOs

NGOs fulfil an essential role in society. However, there are NGOs and NGOs. There are professional, well-organised and serious NGOs, while others are not. I get the impression that some only have a letterhead and a membership consisting of themselves, their dogs and the dogs' cousins. NGOs involved in charity work are those who can get away with murder. Some NGOs are guilty of the arrogance they accuse others of having.

However, the media generally close an eye and a half. During my stint at Il-Gens we investigated an NGO purported to work for persons with disability. Several media outlets have been giving this NGO a lot of positive publicity. No one investigated what was happening. We did and found out that this was a sham. This notwithstanding it kept on getting good publicity from sections of the media.

From information to entertainment

In the last three decades or so, there was a strong movement in many journalistic circles away from information towards entertainment. This was mainly done because of the morphing of media outlets into just big businesses. The commercialisation of the media begets market driven journalism at the expense of normative journalism.

The concept of news value was reduced to one main maxim: if it sells, it is news. As a result readers are entertained more than informed; they are looked at as consumers not as citizens.

Chris Moncrief, a retired Press Association lobby correspondent, argues that:

"We are in the business to write stories to sell newspapers. I think that we are part of the entertainment industry at the down-market end. We do it for money. And if that serves the public at the end of the day - well, that's a bonus."

This movement has many negative consequences. In the opinion of Carl Bernstein, one of the journalists who brought down Nixon, market driven journalism is creating a "sleazoid info-tainment culture" which he also describes an "idiot culture." He continues:

"In this new culture of journalistic titillation, we teach our readers and our viewers that the trivial is significant, that the lurid and loopy are more important than real news."

As a result, readers and viewers are misinformed since junk news drives out wholesome news. This is a culture which tends to satisfy our sense of curiosity but leaves our need for solid information famished because we are not properly informed. Worse still, this creates a distorted sense of reality. During the civil rights movement in the USA, several media outlets felt that the rabid rabble-rousers made better TV than those advocating a pacifist attitude. As a result, they got pride of place in the news bulletins and people started associating the movement with extremists who in fact were a tiny minority. McManus deals at length on the negative societal results of market driven journalism in a book that bears that same title.

There are also many studies about the coverage of the financial crisis the world went through in the last two years, and is still going through. Several researchers pointed out how biased, sensationalists and alarmist were many reports. As a result, some believe that the media could be partly blamed for the meltdown.

Our culture has been reduced to what is widely described as the sound-bite culture. If you can describe your project in 20 seconds, it is fantastic, it not then scrap it. Technical and complex subjects are reduced to a few sentences and are trivialised in the process. We today read the headings more than the stories, watch the video part of the news more than listen to what is being said, tolerate any item for only a few minutes and repeat parrot-like slogans instead of analysing substances.

Many argue on most topics as if they have become instant experts. The less they know about a subject, the more emphatically they make their position. This is becoming the culture of the misinformed and of the uninformed.

The above is perhaps too pessimistic a judgement on our culture as there is a bright side as well. I hope we can bring that out in the discussion.

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