The chances are that whenever I mention news bulletins, it’s in the context of inadequate translations such as ‘okkażżjoni umli’ for ‘humbling occasion’, and even more wretched turns of phrase such as ‘ser ikun qed jesponi esebizzjoni’.
Corruption does not only involve sums of money- Tanja Cilia
Another bugbear is how news items are manipulated in favour of political or other bias and sometimes left out altogether when there is no way they can be distorted to mean exactly the opposite of what they are.
This has led to many people who felt aggrieved by how news involving them has been covered in the press and on television, to write to me at the address at the bottom of this column, stating their case and asking me to “do something about it”.
The good news is that the Parliamentary Committee for the Recodification of Laws is currently hearing proposals regarding an arbitration system and subsequent redress, if applicable, for aggrieved parties, that would do away with libel suits.
Frankly, what is needed is a liaison officer in the office of the Ombudsman, with executive powers to rule on this type of issue. We already have enough red tape and prejudiced bloggers who consider themselves above and beyond the Institute of Maltese Journalists and the Press Ethics Commission – which evidently, are not infallible either.
But as long as the Broadcasting Authority assumes that Net and One balance one another out, and self-regulation is anathema to some, there’s no way ‘fair play’ will obtain.
• Most of our children grew up with Sesame Street, although there were teachers who ordered us not to allow them to watch it “because they would grow up with an atrocious American accent”.
These days, this is not a problem, because not one local television station is interested in adding Malta to the 150 countries, including Muslim nations like Indonesia and Bangladesh, in which the series is aired. This could be a question of finances – or, again, it could be the belief that local productions are infinitely better.
I can dream, can’t I, that one fine day we will see something between L’Albero Azzurro and Sesame Street on our local screens…in Maltese?
Apparently, no one notices that most children’s omnibus early afternoon programmes include clips of foreign products (some of which have characters speaking in Australian accents), and that some presenters are totally unaware of how to communicate with children, and think talking down at them will do.
Be that as it may, there was as much excitement when the news that the US Agency for International Development would fund Sim Sim Humara, the Pakistani version of the popular TV children’s show, to the tune of $20 million (€16m).
The star of the show would be the puppet Ranni, the six-year-old daughter of a peasant farmer. She has plaited hair and wears a school uniform, and is the captain of her school cricket team and a budding harmonium player, and good old Elmo would be there too.
Baaji, the ‘spirited adult woman’, is one of the multitudinous supporting cast which, however, does not include Big Bird, Oscar the Grouch, and Count von Count.
The idea was to introduce Western concepts of gender equality, culture, literacy and other issues, and counter Pakistani children’s limited access to education as well as the rising tide of extremism in a country, which includes about 65 million children under the age of 15.
Therefore, the programmes were in Urdu, and four additional languages for regional broadcast, and involved puppet shows and mobile screenings around the country, school fairs, and parallel radio episodes.
Alas, all this has fallen by the wayside, after Pakistan’s Rafi Peer Theatre Workshop, the entity working on the series, was allegedly involved in severe corruption and fraud on a massive scale.
Ironically, the corruption had been reported through an anti-fraud hotline, and mentioned old debts and friends-of-friends. The company denies the corruption allegations.
This is not the first case in which the media has been involved in corruption, of course; we are still feeling the News of the World aftermath.
But, as we have seen locally, corruption does not only involve sums of money, as the phrase ‘balance in news bulletins’ demonstrates.
Over the years, locally, we have seen other puppets come and go; some of them would not exactly have fitted in with the themes for children’s programmes.
Bad examples are not only corruption; they are also the words that presenters say, when they are ostensibly intending to raise a laugh from the young audience.
I do realise that these days, TVM’s Iż-Żona caters to a slightly older audience than it did in the time of Francesca and Jacob; but it annoyed me nonetheless. I speak, specifically, of the failed practical joke that was related by one of the young women to the other.
A bucket of water laced with dishwashing liquid, and a bag of talcum powder were prepared, and a person was waylaid. The water doused him, and the powder stuck to the wet clothes. Only – the victim of this silly trick was an adult, the father of the youth for whom it was meant.
Incidentally, I wish the production team would do something about the dark outlines around the characters as they move about the set at times, indicating that the backdrop is just that and not actually scenery.
• These days on local television, advertorial product placement is allowed in programming, provided that a notice to this effect appears before and after programming in which it appears.
However, this does not apply to foreign stations. Last Thursday, we therefore had to watch out specifically for the Cisk Lager advert in Le Indagini di Padre Castell, which appeared in the bar close to the Vatican. The priest detective went there to watch a football match with his cronies.
television@timesofmalta.com