I've always been uncomfortable with certain regulatory aspects of the Broadcasting Authority (BA, now do you get the title?) having as I do this perhaps somewhat archaic respect for freedom of speech and viewers' intelligence. It is true that the obscenities perpetrated in Mintoff and KMB's day needed some robust reining-in, but those days are long gone, thankfully, and anyone with an opinion to blurt out or news to impart has outlets a-plenty for this little exercise.
It need hardly be said that in the context of today's plurality in broadcasting, I blow my nose (movie provenance, anyone?) on disingenuous types who try to convince us that things are the way they were in the Eighties and Seventies, though there is a debate to be had on the extent to which there even needs to be a State broadcaster. I'd tend towards the "yes" side, frankly, but it's not an issue of Biblical proportions.
To increase my discomfort, the BA has now delivered itself of a portentous catalogue of guidelines which will have the effect - if I might make so bold - of turning television into an even more soporific medium, carrying a series of talking heads with as much dynamism as a turnip.
"Moderators" (the word itself conjures up a grey vista) are not allowed to express an opinion, argue the toss or generally behave like sentient and sensible human beings. Speakers must answer the question and then shut up, waiting their turn, which will please "maa, how rude you are" Konrad Mizzi, but add precious little to making the show interesting. People like Mizzi (Konrad, not Joe, the latter has been 'disappeared' from what we can make out) love being able to lay down the law without interruption, it fits their style perfectly.
On the other hand, I suppose the guidelines will stop people like Toni Abela making a sorry exhibition of himself the way he did when he was "debating" (if his performance can be graced with that descriptor) with Simon Busuttil, rendering himself a candidate for treatment on a par with that meted out to his erstwhile Deputy-Leader colleague. His filibustering manner, his attempted imposition of his own agenda on the programme and his sheer lack of preparedness or command of his subject only came out because he was challenged, which couldn't happen under the way the BA has decreed it.
The thing is, I prefer to see people as they really are and as they behave under pressure, rather than having everything antiseptically sanitised for me by the all-knowing BA.
I suppose they have their reasons.