Does the camera lie? This is supposed to be a rhetorical question with an unequivocal "no" for an answer; yet these days, when airbrushing, doctoring, and editing are the order of the day, that is no longer the case.
However, this week a friend of mine forwarded two clips that alas, were all too true - even though, ironically, both came from candid camera programmes.
The first involved a hackneyed sequence where a man hides inside a pillar-box to gauge the reactions of people receiving "personal attention" when posting something. A man was so irritated at being tricked like this, that he drew out a gun and shot at the 'joker', fatally wounding him.
The second clip featured a more elaborate stunt, in which a taxi driver had his car turned the wrong way in a one-way street, through the use of jacks, when he went inside a residence to help his passenger carry out luggage.
I have often complained that certain skits - especially those that make use of uniforms and place a great strain on people's emotions - are way out of line; and this was a case in point.
When 'a policeman' walked up to the man and wanted to book him for parking and having driven the wrong way, the man over-reacted to the point of taking out a stick from the boot of his car (after the presenter had revealed his identity) and bludgeoning him to the extent of causing him to have a brain haemorrhage, before the television crew could intervene.
It turned out that it was the man's first day on a job he had sweated blood to acquire... after being discharged from a mental hospital.
I have been taken to task for complaining about some tricks that bear only a faint resemblance to the afore-mentioned two. However, I reiterate that one may never gauge someone else's reaction completely, even if this person has been one's friend since kindergarten.
Brainbox is preparing a series of 100 programmes for the international television station Wine TV, which is also very popular in Malta. Fifty of these programmes will centre on Malta's wine industry, from all facets, and the rest will take us to Sicily and Italy.
Wine TV is a channel dedicated solely to wines and associated topics; the series will also be dubbed in German for Wein TV. Lorie Kim, chief operating officer of Wine TV, was present at the launch of the first DOK wines to be produced in Malta, held at the Corinthia Palace Hotel last Thursday.
One hopes that PBS or E22 will acquire second rights. On second thoughts, perhaps Family TV could purchase them - to stop airing Qegħdin Sew and sundry other sit-coms at all hours of the day, because from what I have seen of this well-researched series, it makes for interesting viewing.
Hopefully, this series will continue putting Malta on the world wine map, both as a boutique wine market, and also as a niche tourist destination.
This week someone told us to buy a ktieb li għandu jkun f'kull kċina fid-dar.
For some reason, the web address http://tv-online-channels.com/online-tv/Malta-tvchan nels-127.html under Malta, offers Net Television twice, One once, and Smash once. It also purports to offer 'Munxar Television' - which, alas, turns out to have 'no signal'.
Meanwhile, a delegation from PBS has gone to Dublin to watch the AVID broadcasting system in action. PBS plans to revamp the newsroom with this state-of-the-art equipment, but of course a chain is only as strong as its weakest link.
This system could also be used to spruce up the irritating graphics of the new, improved PBS website... and it might also encourage businesses to purchase the advertising space at the right-hand side of the homepage which so far remains unclaimed.
Today there's another occasion where you must forego at least one helping of ice-cream. Do this to help the Mission Fund - the fund-raising marathon will be aired, on and off, on One, Net, and E22, starting from 10 a.m. Some of the best people in the media will be helping out personally - the best the rest of us can do is contribute financially.
Meanwhile, the aftermath of the Eurovision song contest rumbles on. Many people, as well they might, were irritated that when Morena returned to Malta, many people forming part of the delegation were conspicuous by their absence. Some of them did respond to my telephone calls and e-mails - some did not.
That having been said, what was supposed to be a "plausible explanation" (i.e. that a policemen, seeing the bottleneck of people, allowed another exit to be used) does not hold water with me. The raison d'être of a delegation is to stick together; surely a few more minutes in an arrivals lounge would have saved the faces of the said delegation more than what could be construed as an undignified retreat? Did this happen because there was no welcoming committee, I wonder?
Meanwhile, only foreign television stations have picked up the comment from one Chinese news agency branding Sharon Stone 'public enemy of all mankind'. This follows her comments to the effect that the recent earthquake in China may have been the result of bad karma over the country's treatment of Tibet. In spite of her subsequent abject apologies, she has been dropped as the face of Christian Dior's Chinese advertisements.
television@timesofmalta.com