The latest audience assessment study by the Broadcasting Authority confirmed that the State broadcaster’s TVM remains the most popular station followed by the Labour Party’s One TV and Net TV, owned by the Nationalist Party.
The data also shows that TV audiences tend to peak between 7.30pm and 10pm, the time when most stations broadcast their main news bulletins. In fact, news features as the second most popular programme after drama and ahead of talk shows. TVM news ranks third among the most quoted programmes by respondents.
News on TV continues to be well followed, also because of the visual aspect, and that is a huge responsibility on the broadcaster, more specifically its newsroom. No wonder broadcasting watchdogs the world over – bar places run by dictatorial regimes – demand very high standards in news handling. Our own Broadcasting Act lays down, for example, that news and current affairs programmes shall not be sponsored and the idea, of course, is to ensure as fair a picture as humanly possible of what isbeing reported.
In addition, the public broadcasting services are bound by law to ensure “due impartiality” in news and current affairs programmes. This does not apply to the two political TV stations, the argument being that “the [Broadcasting] Authority shall be able to consider the general output of programmes provided by the various broadcasting licensees and contractors, together as a whole”.
It is an argument few would be willing to swallow, preferring to think it is more of a move by the two big parties in Parliament to give themselves a licence to broadcast news tinged with their own colour.
Unfortunately, not all seems to be well with the way the State broadcaster is handling news reporting. Thank God we are far from what used to happen in the late 1970s and early 1980s when Xandir Malta, the PBS precursor, was a tool of the Labour government. It was the ultimate, though perhaps an honest admission, when a senior Cabinet minister had declared Xandir Malta should be used to nurture a socialist generation, or words to that effect.
God forbid anything even remotely close to that were to happen but once you get onto a slippery slope you never know where you could end up. The people who manage the news at Broadcasting House need to tread carefully.
Along the years, even after Xandir Malta, both parties in government found PBS a convenient and accommodating means to transmit their distorted and doctored messages to the people. Ill omens loom.
In early December, the Broadcasting Authority – which also needs to be far more vigilant vis-à-vis the State broadcaster and take proactive action rather than wait for complaints to be filed – found PBS had gravely failed in its duties when it decided not to report immediately on an incident in Parliament.
The incident in question occurred on November 20 when Labour MP Joe Debono Grech – a Cabinet minister in Xandir Malta times – used threatening language in an exchange in the House with independent MP Marlene Farrugia. Mr Debono Grech eventually apologised.
That was a very serious shortcoming but not an isolated case. Items uncomfortable to the government keep being relegated down the main bulletin news list and certain ‘doctoring’ can often be noticed, especially by the trained eye but not only.
PBS does not deserve it, less so this country. The public broadcaster should boast of having the best, the most fair, the most balanced and the most impartial TV news bulletins on the island.