Every so often my mail includes letters that are far more important than the usual ‘this is what you must say’ and ‘you are stupid’ ones, which usually come from people who are too lily-livered to sign their names.

From Carmen Sammut, whom I mentioned in passing last week, I received the following: “I read about your concerns re Press Ethics Commission. I would like to point out that I am not a Malta Today columnist. I do contribute sporadic unpaid blogs for the news portal. So please rest assured that, like Claire Bonello, I do not have a conflict of interest on the matter. Media Today are far from being the hand that feeds me.

“PEC is currently updating the Code of Ethics and we are looking at ways in which we can strengthen journalistic structures. We hope you will be able to help in this process.”

My reply was as follows: “If you have been a reader of my column for some time, you will find that I have often described you with accolades such as ‘a woman after my own heart’ and similar phrases. That is why I was so surprised to see your work in Malta Today; I hold you as the epitome of fairness, and I was astonished to see your name, given your cachet and position within the PEC, in a publication that had also contained certain allegations. It was not a case of whether you had been paid fees or not, believe me. I will make sure that your clarification goes into my column.

“With regards to ‘helping journalistic structures be ethical’ it is good to see you think I can be of help, because the implication is that I am ethical, myself.”

The concern with ethics is only extant in those who apply it to their work; when people in the media do not care it exists, they do not even recognise it.

It is enough to look at how certain news items are covered – or totally ignored – in news bulletins. It is not merely a question of which words are used, and which facts are left out. There is also the amount of airtime devoted to a news item, and its position in the running order of the script.

Certain radio and television stations glossed over the clergy abuse case; others deliberately selected stirring vocabulary designed to arouse emotions. Neither did their public a service. The selfsame anti-clerical feeling that engenders the latter type of reportage also raises its ugly head each time something remotely connected with the Church is scraped from the bottom of the barrel.

Ethics is not only morality and principles; it goes further.

Witness, for instance, the ever-increasing incidence of violence and ‘Status; it’s complicated’ scenarios in local drama. It is obvious that local companies do not have the lettuce to shoot epics about the Kennedys (History Channel), Charlotte Gray (film) and the Borgias (Sky Atlantic), which by dint of the names themselves are guaranteed to attract large audiences.

So they do the next best thing. They create cliff-hangers by having people shot or beaten up, or characters packing their bags, at the end of an episode. Some companies engage the services of people who are considered ‘hot’, or popular for their fan base to watch the series.

Once upon a time, it had been decreed that there would be no close-ups of people on television, especially if these were in a position of vulnerability. All this, too, has flown out of the window.

I would expect an image consultant to tell people their clothes are not suitable for the type of presentation they will give, or that the make-up they have towelled on will make them look ridiculous.

I know some people out there will say I am splitting hairs, because an image is what people want to project when they are on the audio/visual media. But, again, I say, in settings where appearance matters, is it fair to withhold pertinent advice from those who desperately need it?

It is no excuse that during the silly season, finding something to talk about takes elbow grease and imagination – something which, indeed, could explain why the second half of most news bulletins sounds likea documentary or an advertorial rather than up-to-the-minute coverage of what is happening in Malta and overseas.

Somewhere in between sonic booms that were not, seedy jokes about fruit, what the Prime Minister did and where the leader of the opposition went, and hell hath no fury like lovers scorned clichés, it was more of the same.

Pronunciations, especially of foreign proper nouns, still fell far off what they were supposed to be; criminals were still accorded the luxury of being referred to by their nicknames, and the language was still mangled beyond belief.

Ethics comes into this, too. Airtime has to be filled – and these days, a lot of it is taken up with magazine programmes in which guests turn up to expound upon their pet topics.

And there lies the rub, as my friend Bill was wont to say. Some of these experts come from government departments or entities; some from NGOs. It is painful to hear some of them speak.

They halt, at a loss for words; they repeat themselves and utter the dreaded ‘m’. They backtrack. Their diction is bad. They say they will have to research the answer to the question. They switch to English for whole sentences, rather than merely a word or two, when they cannot express themselves in the vernacular.

Is it possible that the people responsible for selecting representatives for the media actually have no one better to send; or is it that these people push themselves in order to gain, eventually, recognition as a speaker on a particular topic?

Either way, it is not ethical to make us listen to them – despite the fact that we have the power to switch to another station.

television@timesofmalta.com