My fingers have been itching for quite some time to put pen to paper. The summer is the “silly season” in media circles and this one I believe has been especially “silly” in our media.

I remember a time when the front page of The Times carried mostly foreign news. Not nowadays. What happens abroad today is of little interest to journalists.

And if it’s economic news, it’s Greek to the media in Malta. This is a pity because Malta is a very open country. We are in the European Union. We have an international currency in our pockets. What we manufacture here is mostly sold abroad. Tourism, a pillar of our economy, is totally dependent on foreign demand. The prices of products we import are determined by events abroad. What happens to the euro affects our prices. What happens to the oil price affects each household very directly. What happens in Britain, Italy, Germany and France affects our airline, our hotels, our restaurants.

What happens abroad affects our economy directly and immediately. This is why we need to put our own news in context.

The last few months in Malta were dominated by issues of interest to Maltese journalists, perhaps. But were our newspapers giving us the relevant picture of world and European affairs that affect us?

A look at the economic news in other countries, some very near to us, is very telling. Austerity is writ large all over these items. Spain, Greece, Ireland and Portugal cut public sector wages. Romania cuts a full quarter off its public salaries. Unemployment reaches new highs in many countries, standing at an average 10 per cent all over Europe. In Spain, unemployment tops 20 per cent, with half of youths unemployed. Several countries are still in recession. Ireland, having temporarily come out of recession, is now receding again. Talk of a double-dip recession is rife.

Greece and Italy announce redundancies in the public sector and only one worker will be hired for every five who retire. Other EU members say they will shrink their public sectors. Italy closes tens of government institutions. Germany cuts public sector jobs and postpones public projects.

Portugal and Greece increase their VAT rates. Several countries raise their income tax rates. Germany increases its excise taxes on energy. Ireland imposes a carbon tax.

European governments’ deficits are now over seven per cent of the gross domestic product, with some countries’ deficits in double digits. Ireland’s will next year stand at 32 per cent. Many governments announce deep cuts in their spending, mostly in social expenditure and public projects. Greece cuts pensions. Spain and France reduce benefits and freeze pensions. Holland cuts healthcare. Britain cuts child benefit and caps social services with even more savage public expenditure cuts to be announced soon.

Several countries have gone cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund to be bailed out of their unredeemable debts. Most spectacularly, Greece is borrowing money from other EU countries’ taxpayers as the markets would not lend enough money to its government.

And in Malta? Good news does not sell. So it’s of little interest to the media that we have unemployment of under five per cent and dropping at the best rate in Europe, tourism close to the 2008 record, the fastest increase in exports in Europe, very strong banks, sound public finances, new investments being announced weekly, bond offers lapped up in minutes, a plethora of public projects, good reports from credit rating agencies and the World Economic Forum putting us in the group of most advanced economies.

What has been very interesting to the local media during the silly season were the laptop of the Żebbuġ mayor, a sum of Lm80 supposedly misappropriated by the Santa Venera mayor, the missed VAT return of the governing party’s secretary general, the Finance Minister’s maid and whether the Sliema mayor should be dismissed.

Of course, these are problems as well. But considering the international and European context of deep economic crisis and austerity measures, and the contrasts with economic news in Malta, they definitely pale. Most countries would be only too happy to have the “problems” that have graced the Maltese media’s headlines and front pages these last few months.