There is a time for everything, says the Good Book. “A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot.” Many other pairs of opposites follow as a clear sign of the ebb and flow of history. What the writer of the Good Book did not say is that there is also a time for ‘Church media bashing’.
Last week was – yawn, yawn – such a week.
Labour Member of Parliament Glenn Bedingfield said that he is sad that the media in general are losing their credibility. He then sombrely gave vent to his dolour because the Church media, instead of spreading the Word of God, are behaving in what he judged to be a partisan way. Bedingfield preferred not to mention that the only time the Broadcasting Authority chided RTK this year was for broadcasting government produced material which gave the Partit Laburista unfair advantage during the electoral campaign.
Bedingfield then enthusiastically sang the paeans to truth. He quoted the Archbishop with the same fervour that someone more renowned, it is said, quotes the Bible. Truth and nothing but the truth, is the be-all and end-all of journalism, said the former journalist, valiant MEP and famous blogger. It is quite rich for Bedingfield to speak about the truth. A few months ago he was fined €3,000 for writing untrue things about former Minister Tonio Fenech. And this was not a unique experience.
Besides Bedingfield, a number of luminaries did their little bit of bashing during Xarabank.
I am certain that those managing the Church media have learnt the basic media beatitude: Happy are the media people who are reviled and attacked, particularly by the powers-that-be. Woe to them when they are ignored or abandoned by the audiences.
A story on Friday’s Newsbook.com.mt shows that audiences have not abandoned the Church media. On the contrary, they are enjoying a new spring even though we are in the thick of the winter of political cynicism that has engulfed our country.
A few examples from Google analytics suffice:
Newsbook.com.mt is the second most popular news website published in the Maltese language
The number of unique visitors to Newsbook.com.mt during 2017 was 15 per cent more than the visitors in 2016. This year’s increase is double that registered between 2015 and 2016. Visitors are accessing the site more often, so much so that sessions increased by 62 per cent in 2017 (increase in 2016 was 26 per cent over 2015). Page views have increased by 55 per cent (the increase in 2016 was 16 per cent).
The Facebook page of Newsbook.com.mt is today more than 81,000 strong.
These increases make one proud of being part of such a media organisation.
A quick look at Alexa.com (the most reputable site measuring website usage) gives us the real reason why Bedingfield and similar ilk are disappointed as well as anguished. Newsbook.com.mt is the second most popular news website published in the Maltese language. TVM, which besides news, features drama and other TV programmes, is more popular than Newsbook. Horror of horrors for the Bedingfields of this world, Newsbook.com.mt is more popular than iNewsmalta.com (the site owned by the General Workers’ Union) and One.com.mt (the Labour Party news website). I will not rub salt in the wound by revealing the ranking of the blog of the honourable gentleman.
The other important arm of the Church media is RTK. Its audiences have been in freefall for a number of years. Turning the tide around will prove to be a very tough challenge. Many changes have been made to revise the negative ranking. RTK has now become the first visual radio in Malta. Every day, six hours of varied programming are transmitted live on Facebook. The transmissions go beyond straight broadcasts of talking heads. Facebook viewers are offered video footage, Skype calls and other audio-visual content. Audiences have reacted positively and these programmes are registering an average of 14,000 views each day.
The station today features a much more streamlined schedule, innovative programmes, challenging current affairs content, accurate and fair news bulletins, as well as some of the best radio presenters on the island, together with a small but extremely dedicated team of employees.
Will the improvement be reflected in the Broadcasting Authority survey measuring audiences during October? Only time will tell.
The list given by the Good Book balances a negative (e.g. death) with a positive (e.g. birth). The same thing happened during this Church media bashing week. The bashing was counteracted by the praise. At the end of the week the government wanted to attack PN leader Adrian Delia. Where did it find the fodder to feed its cannon? Government based its criticism of Delia on an exclusive story published by Newsbook.com.mt.
Wonder of wonders, surprises are never in short supply on this island.
The ebb and flow of human events is evidenced here as well. A time for bashing, a time for praising.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt