The Public Broadcasting Services’ decision to make public its Guidelines on the Obligation of Due Impartiality, which will come into force on June 1, was a step in the right direction.
Considering that PBS is the national broadcaster, people on both sides of the political fence would surely subscribe to the basic guideline directing PBS journalists and presenters of current affairs programmes aired on TVM to keep away from expressing public support for any political party.
The same can be said regarding the stand that those at PBS associated with news and current affairs do not engage in off-air activities that can give rise to doubts about their objectivity on-air and towards what is transmitted. Of course, they remain entitled to their personal convictions and views.
The PBS move follows the new code of journalistic ethics proposed by the Institute of Maltese Journalists, which seeks to introduce what have been defined as “fresh ethical obligations on all sections of the media”.
To work in journalism is fascinating. However, it is far from easy, although it may seem so for people who look at it from outside. Many a time journalists, especially those working for media sectors with special legal obligations or commitments concerning objectivity, fairness and detachment, have to operate in difficult circumstances. The challenges they face when searching for the truth can be formidable.
Committed, genuine professional journalists do search for the truth and do seek to respect it notwithstanding what the general perception may be or what popular surveys indicate. They aim at reality in all its truth, not partial or at the service of special interests that are not those of the good of the person and of society. In fact, serious and honest journalists shun distorted truth.
Seasoned journalists know that the search for truth is an ongoing task. They know too that it requires a constant and restless effort. It also imposes on all those concerned an adequate level of knowledge, critical faculties and courage.
Such an exercise is not without problems. Journalists being human, they have their own personal ideas, their preferences and even their prejudices. Yet, those who are responsible for communication cannot shield themselves by referring to what is normally described as the impossibility of objectivity.
As one wise moral leader once advised, if complete and total objectivity is difficult, the effort to discover the truth is not. Nor is the decision to offer the truth, the habit of not manipulating the truth, the attitude of the incorruptibility of the truth. It is guided solely by a just ethical conscience, without ceding to false reasons of prestige or personal, political, economic or special interests.
Both the PBS guidelines and the Institute of Maltese Journalists’ code of ethics should be viewed in this context.
In a rapidly increasing marketplace of information and/or ideas, especially in the blogosphere, the example journalists give is bound to have a significant wide influence.
Professional journalists need to invest in the wisdom that their task of communication, properly used, should be to help bring about and sustain a human community based on mutual respect and understanding, human dignity, fairness and justice and a meaningful dialogue.
That is, of course, easier said than done. Journalists worth their salt who strive to do their job as diligently as humanly possible know how many obstructions are thrown in their way even by people who paint themselves as paragons of virtue and correctness.
High ideals, solid values and full integrity are therefore a must.