Claws circuit

There are several cardinal rules for broadcasters, which, sadly, some of the newer ones have never learned, and some of the older ones think they are too experienced to follow any longer. Some broadcasters, whatever their age, think they are above the following rules:

Topics covered in the local news bulletins are the same old stories- Tanja Cilia

Know something about each record you play; mind your language; never allow dead air; never be supercilious; never mock callers; never raise your voice; never talk over records or sing along to them; treat every camera as taking you; treat every mike as live; two presenters must never talk simultaneously; walk, and never run, into a studio are the basic guidelines.

Some are wont to chatter inanely to cover dead air; some choose to play music. That’s why Brahms’s Lullaby (the instrumental version, not the one sung by Dean Martin) is played at around 9 a.m. This is but another indication of the pathetic lack of both general knowledge and savoir faire of today’s presenters.

The other day, for instance, an entrepreneur guesting on several programmes mentioned a specific website each time he was asked about his activities.

I visited this site and found that the text was black, on a grey background, making it very difficult to read. I sent him a mail indicating this – and he curtly replied that it was still “under construction”. That was not the point at all; you do not ask people to view something that is annoying and incomplete, while boasting about what it stands for.

I am also annoyed that when contributors record their work, or use the same script again and again, they do not seek to rectify errors, and so the same mistakes are broadcast again and again.

Last week also saw the visit of the Al Nour Wal Amal (Light and Hope) Orchestra. This 38-strong troupe of 38 blind young women from Egypt plays western classical music as well as oriental music.

I lost count of how many times the women were referred to as “bla dwal”, rather as if they were the latter day version of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.

But one of the most ridiculous conversations I have ever heard remains the one on Radju Malta, on Friday of the previous week, where the woman involved in the fostering issue had been interviewed about a fait accompli when it had not even happened – and the piece was broadcast anyway, for reasons best known to the PBS newsroom staff.

In the interview, we were told the parents of the child “…iddeċidew li jriduha lura magħhom” (decided they wanted her back). This type of biased talk ought never to have been allowed to go on air, let alone on the national broadcaster.

The foster parent said she did not like the child being shunted to and from her home, the crèche and the parents’ place; she wanted her to live a ‘normal life’. What is normal about living with people who are not your natural or adoptive parents, I ask, and being taken to extra-curricular activities that are not ‘normal’ for most other children?

Were the words “as though she is mine” a lapsus? In any case, we are told the fostering family would have liked to help the child ‘integrate gradually’ into the change she is facing now that she is in Switzerland, by being kept here for a while longer.

I discern a distinct lack of logic in the way a child is supposed to assimilate herself into her natural family – which she had not been seeing often enough, by being kept away from them – and into a life in a new country by not being in the country.

• Speaking of foreign countries, the online May 1 edition of the Human Rights Watch site www.hrw.org/home and Rianovosti http://en.rian.ru/world/20120501/173150653.html , as well as other online and print publications, speak of the way Yulia Tymoshenko was allegedly beaten by prison guards as they were forcibly transferring her to a hospital in the Ukraine.

Local stations barely mentioned this, in the same way that they skip certain news that would show the right or the left in a bad or good light – the permutations of these depending upon the vision of the administration of that station. The current human rights record for Euro 2012 host Poland aren’t so hot, either.

Neither, for that matter, has any journalist bothered to call Labour MP Adrian Vassallo, who has formally announced his retreat from politics, whether he would have considered the alternative – that is, crossing the floor.

The topics that are covered in the local news bulletins are the same old stories, with variations on the theme, albeit from totally different angles, sometimes.

For the Maltese, or at least half of us, human rights being broken involve men on their last legs pathetically laying into cameramen from “the television station of the party they do not support”. And if all this is caught on camera and played in a loop, so much the better.

But I digress.

Ukraine and Poland have not been mentioned in one of the 20 or so e-mails with the subject ‘Breaking of human rights’.

Without fail, all of them – from different people – encouraged me to sign a form or a petition, or to write a letter protesting about the situation in Baku, and how Malta should immediately cease and desist from preparations for the Eurovision Song Festival.

Could it be, perish the thought, that this campaign is being carefully orchestrated by people with political motives?

Has this got anything to do with people who are jockeying for the new set of breakfast and matinée shows, or those who have moved from one station to another in the hope of acquiring a plum job once a certain position is vacant?

From personal experience, I am now issuing an important warning: please do not click on links that purport to give the ‘latest’ Eurovision news – even if prima facie it appears that the webmaster is Maltese.

television@timesofmalta.com