Brow studies

“If it bleeds, it leads” is the main criterion used by several American television stations to decide which story takes pole position in the evening’s main news bulletin.

We had a blatant example of this last week when the police resurrected the sad case of the young (American) woman murdered by her boyfriend; her body was in the boot of the car which, ironically, traffic policemen stopped because the tail-lights were faulty... and at the time they let him off with a caution.

Despite the express wishes of the family, the clip of the arrest, shot by the police camera on the dashboard of their vehicle, was aired again and again on most television stations.

In Malta we have had a similar case where the name of a murder victim and the circumstances of the discovery of her body were repeatedly recounted on almost all local radio and television stations.

One so-called journalist even used a word that she would surely not have used (a) had the victim been related to her and (b) had she bothered to look up its actual, rather than colloquial, meaning.

Both young women, in my opinion, were murdered again and again for the sake of sensationalism and audience numbers.

This is a plea to all journalists for all the Thereses and Magadelines and all the girls who fall into bad company that fails to look after them and tries to get rid of them when they become ‘evidence’; please treat their stories as you would want others to had they been your sisters.

• I remember saying – and no one had gainsaid me – that in Malta, the topics are each written on a slip of paper and drawn by lot from a bag.

Unless, of course, the topic is politics, or may somehow be twisted into that, in which case the rated relevance and importance will change drastically from that of Net to that of One, and vice-versa.

Lately, however, we have seen another worrying trend – that of people saying what they want, and what they will, and then insisting that their words were not to be taken factually; rather as Hillary Clinton had said that she “mis-spoke”.

We have the example of Senator Jon Kyl, who defended Republicans’ willingness to shut down the government over funding for Planned Parenthood by stating that abortion is “well over 90 per cent of what Planned Parenthood does”.

Later, his office issued a statement that “his remark was not intended to be a factual statement, but rather to illustrate that Planned Parenthood, an organisation that receives millions of dollars in taxpayer funding, does subsidise abortions.” The senator would enjoy charting with Massimo Giletti, I think.

And then we have the print journalists who never double-check their sources, and come up with convoluted sentences such as “Rescue boats from Italy were working in Maltese waters at a certain point because Malta did not have the proper crafts for such a rescue effort” ().

The writer didn’t even deign reply to my mail about the issue.

The complaint by Moviment Iva against PBS was sent directly to the Broadcasting Authority, and the management of TVM was not copied in.

This complaint claimed PBS had not shown balance when it featured a clip by the Movement Against Divorce, but none by its goodself.

This was a blatant untruth and PBS wanted a retraction or a public apology. When PBS asked the BA whether or not the case was going to be heard, it was informed it had been dropped. More and more curious; especially considering that most of us are already sick of the pro and con arguments, and, indeed, the very word divorce.

• We are also sick of the crass unprofessionalism of the people who present themselves as experts and spout drivel that they want us to take seriously.

Sometimes, I do not know, indeed, whether the above is the case, or whether these people are broadcasting some kind of joke.

There was the person who told us to give children cereal bars because they are “healthy”, the other who pronounced Frattini to rhyme with Platini, and the other who came up with his own pronunciation of Mubarak.

And local media still has to decide whether it’s Misrata or Misurata. Of course, we are not alone in this habit; Gaddafi’s surname is spelled in dozens of ways in the foreign press.

Then there are the (mostly female) presenters who think that if they use a little girlie voice they will come over cuter, and those who take calls as they think, off-air, but they may be heard whispering before deciding whether or not to allow callers take part in a live programme.

One presenter told us there are “inauthentic” recipes for kwareżimal that include margarine; the sweet dates from a time when no dairy produce could be used during the whole of Lent. Since when has this concoction become a dairy product?

• MP Justyne Caruana brought a salient point to the attention of the House of Representatives. I had never understood the point of having a news bulletin for people with hearing impairment, and another for those who can hear, especially when they follow one another.

Caruana rightly insists it is outright discrimination that only the 6 p.m. TVM news round-up and repetitions of Xarabank are shown in sign language; rather as if 8 p.m. were a watershed for those who cannot hear.

• Meanwhile, the race is on to produce programmes that will make it to the next TVM schedule – I lost count of how many times the call for applications for the Programme Statement of Intent goes out on Radju Malta.

Could it be there is also some head-hunting going on?

television@timesofmalta.com