Slow e-motion

I have had cause to complain several times about the same niggles that are have not been fixed, despite it being very easy to do so.

One of these is the penchant for reading the same clips in news bulletins for radio and television, where it sounds weird to be told “here we see...” when there are no visuals.

Another is the ceaseless repetition of the same items, verbatim, even though the news, by virtue of its name, changes every minute.

Last Monday, for instance, the PBS radio 10 a.m. news bulletin blithely informed us that the Beckhams had three “other” boys, and that they were undecided as to what to call their daughter.

In the first instance, they meant “offspring” of course – and as for the second, most of us already knew by at least 7 a.m why they had decided to call the child Harper Seven.

One advantage broadcast media has over print media is that the former may be updated far faster than used to be the case with the phone calls and faxes of my day. Newspapers have to wait for the next edition.

By extension, the daily review of newspapers on radio and television could be considered anachronistic and irrelevant – but there is not much we can do about it, since it is an established practice and airtime has to be filled in somehow.

Yet, our journalists and presenters fail us dismally when it comes to presenting the up-to-date facts.

We get all manner of bloopers: so-called updates of international incidents that would already have been replaced by two more recent ones in the international broadcast media; information about celebrities’ latest doings, when the presenter is not aware that the person has died during the preceding week; and so forth.

I also notice a pathetic dearth of what used to be called general knowledge. Some disc jockeys get around this by looking up information while playing tracks; but of course, newscasters cannot do this, as they must keep to a script (apparently ad-libbing is only allowed when it comes to stale jokes and inane phrases.

A case in point is that Magda Magri Naudi has been telling us for ages that whereas in Ethiopia and Eritrea, fenugreek is used in cuisine, in the former nation the seeds are also used as a natural herbal medicine to mitigate the symptoms of diabetes. Each time, she stresses this must always be used in conjunction with advice from one’s doctor.

Magri Naudi also says fenugreek tea may relieve arthritis pain and help in other areas of one’s life.

It was therefore weird to hear an ‘expert’ on another programme say he had no idea about whether fenugreek helped or hindered in certain conditions, and whether it was dangerous to ingest it.

This was promptly followed by a phone call from someone who said the plant and seeds were implicated in the recent deadly outbreak of E. Coli-related illnesses across Europe.

Alas, neither the presenter nor the people present in the studio could inform us that this had been traced to a shipment of contaminated fenugreek seeds from Egypt.

It is not enough to present a programme and leave listeners with incomplete information, which may lead to needless worry.

Had this been followed through, all we would have had to do was run to the larder to check the packaging of our fenugreek seeds. The whole purpose of broadcasting partial information is to get people to research the rest.

Also, not enough information has been given to the general public – and not one programme devoted to – the phone-hacking scandal that rocked the print media world.

This abuse was systematic, and not merely on a need-to-know basis.

The Data Protection Act has been blown to smithereens by bribes and hush money paid to public servants to provide information through pilfering other files and hacking telephonesof victims of crimes, and theirrelatives.

Ex-British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is accusing Cabinet Secretary Sir Gus O’Donnell of blocking the inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal, intimating there was “collusion with ‘the underworld’”.

Other people are also complaining of breach of privacy. Zoe Margolis, a.k.a. The Girl With A One-Track Mind, and Dr Brooke Magnanti, of The Diary of a London Call Girl blog both insist that the Murdoch-owned broadsheet The Sunday Times hacked theircomputers.

All this gets just a few lines in the local broadcast media when puerile items are blown out of proportion.

• One notes that finally, both halves of the couple in the Nista’ campaign have decided to take up full-time jobs. Wifey tells us, complacently, that “ir-raġel fehem li x-xogħol tad-dar u ttrobbija tat-tifel...” (My husband has understood that chores and the upbringing of our child...).

For the husband, the priorities are different: “It-tifel u d-dar huma tagħna t-tnejn.” (Our son and our house belong to the both of us).

• Like several other companies, Good Earth has decided that the punchline for its Maltese adverts must be in English. Why?

television@timesofmalta.com