Par for the coarse

On April 3, the ether over Malta was abuzz with talk about the Guidelines on the Obligation of Due Impartiality presented by Public Broadcasting Services – with one exception.

A smidgeon of media-savvy teaches full well how this statement may be manipulated- Tanja Cilia

It so happened that in the 8 p.m. news on Radju Malta, this momentous document was not mentioned – and on TVM, it was relegated to well after the first item – rather as if the stations of the nation wanted to train the spotlights elsewhere.

For years I have been harping on how ridiculous it was for people in local broadcasting to do voice-overs, or appearances, or write opinion columns, blogs, or even letters-to-the-editor, to endorse products, whatever they are.

The document specifically mentions people ‘associated with news and current affairs’ in the state broadcaster. I go further. Impartiality and pin money do not marry well.

Of course, this is a Catch-22 situation. Just as disc-jockeys may be bribed to give airtime to certain singers, companies choose media personalities because their presence, or their voice, inspires confidence in the general public.

I am always itching to ask him if he uses that aftershave and her if she shops there. But let’s take this to the extreme. The presenter of a current events programme is the celebrity endorsement of a foreign enterprise with a franchise in Malta. It is discovered that the company was involved in an international case of fraud. Will this be one of the topics discussed in a future edition of the programme? Here, the phrase ‘conflict of interest’ becomes sinister.

This ‘ban’ on public figures does not take sides, and being seen to be impartial, on issues bearing industrial or political (what about religious, medical, commercial and social?) issues, does not come into effect until June 1. Why? Is that when certain contracts end?

It goes without saying that once one becomes a political candidate, he is duty- and honour-bound to forfeit his (full-time) job at PBS.

The Broadcasting Act insists on the impartiality of those chairing specific broadcasts: news, current affairs, political debates, and so forth. There must be no leading questions or comments therein, and no public appearances by those involved that would give others present the impression that a person validates a course of action, or backs a particular person’s agenda.

A clause indicates that audio-visual material ought to reflect divergent views, if, as, and where they exist. A smidgeon of media-savvy teaches full well how this statement may be manipulated to give clips subliminal advantage and bias. This, apart from the hundreds of photographs posted on social sites.

Sometimes, journalists mould facts into what they would like them to be. Take, for example, the headline that appeared on www.oikotimes.com: ‘Norman Hamilton resigns from PBS’.

Most people, including Norman Hamilton himself, think he is the local expert on all matters Eurovision. Yet – he has not resigned from PBS, because he did not work there.

He was (at his own request) the unpaid Eurovision consultant of PBS CEO Anton Attard.

Inevitably, Attard has played the ‘conflict of interest’ and ‘partisan politics blinders’ trump cards about Hamilton’s ‘immediate and irrevocable’ decision.

PBS holds the franchise and therefore definite copyright for the Eurovision Song Contest. Yet what could have been a priceless collaboration throughout the duration of the event unto the Baku finals has now been abruptly terminated.

Now it is my humble opinion that when you have a consultant, his job description is self-explanatory. You include him each time you have a meeting about whatever it is that you are consulting with him is held.

Yet, Hamilton insists his meetings with Attard were few and far between, and that he was not consulted with regard to the appointments of the juries for the two preliminary rounds of the local contest, and, the names he put forward for these were not considered.

It is a moot point that Hamilton, like many people at PBS, has his own contacts, and that anyone else would have been paid a fee commensurate with his experience.

He also objected to the change in the line-up backing Kurt (whether or not he knows the full story, this was not for him to decide), and to the on-going (since before the last Eurovision contest, in fact) turning of Baku into one mammoth building site in a so-called ‘beautification’ process that also includes unceremoniously getting rid of stray dogs.

Oddly, I saw no mention of the topic to which I referred last week: freedom of expression for the press and the people in Azerbaijan. And meanwhile, similar atrocities are happening in China and in Ukraine, and newscasters and journalists are not exactly falling over themselves to hike over to those countries to shoot footage for documentaries.

But I would say that what made the fur ruffle and the feathers fly were the restrictions upon what One (and consequently other stations) could show viewers when it came to clips and live coverage of Eurovision.

Attard said that since Hamilton had written him a “private and confidential” missive and had subsequently spilled the self-same beans on One, the political motive was clear for all to see, and thence his position was untenable.

He also made clear the difference between ‘consultant’ and ‘dictator’ – something which was never in doubt for those of us who collect dictionaries.

Just when you thought the Ta’ Ganza advertisements could not get worse…they did. A man tells a woman he is going to emulate her, by going to the said shop to purchase... Malizia Uomo.

It is interesting to note that at least one programme on Radju Malta will be exactly like the L-Erbgħa Fost Il-Ġimgħa about which I had lobbed the idea. But for me to actually produce it myself would have been… a conflict of interest.

television@timesofmalta.com