'Three-year-old boy forgotten in restaurant on his birthday'. 'Wal-Mart announcement tells blacks to leave'. 'Man puts infant in oven for two hours'. 'Crash diets lead to crashed cars'. 'Rachel Corrie gets street named after her in Ramallah'.

Real headlines like these never make it to the news bulletins of Maltese radio and television stations. They might, however, be mentioned in passing by programme presenters and disc jockeys who intersperse them with their platter chatter.

What we do get is a constant list of regurgitated items, which are sometimes not even updated from one bulletin to another, except perhaps when it comes to the evening one.

We also get a sportscaster, incredibly, giving the wrong football match score (3-0 rather than 3-1) when he was reading from a script, and another one, incredibly, telling us he 'cannot remember' one of the teams in the quarter-finals for the Champions League. Could he not have written them down on the back of an envelope?

This week, moreover, I was particularly irritated about the use of two words that ought to have been confined to the bins of oblivion long ago. The first was a noun that was used umpteen times in the reading of the novella by Twanny Scalpello. The book he is reading was penned at a time when labels flew thick and fast, and a disability was practically used instead of the name of the person who had it.

I have argued this point with my writer friends several times. If a word is no longer considered appropriate, but on the contrary, its nuances nowadays are deemed insulting and insensitive (and here I am not talking about political correctness), most of them say it ought to be removed and replaced by something contemporary.

This would not demean the original work; rather, it would endow it with a new sensitivity. Of course, if the author is still alive, he must be contacted (see below) before any alterations take place; if the said script is in the public domain, this may be done at the discretion of the person who is doing the reading.

There will always be the problem of the aforesaid person being of a mind-set that does not even recognise how derogatory a certain term is.

However, I expect better from presenters of a younger generation. This week, during a children's programme, we had the use of another offensive (yet colloquial) term to describe a physical abnormality.

The author from whose work this term came is still alive - but I am assuming, because of certain indications, that the book was not read before the first chapter went on air. It did not occur to the presenters that the word 'short' would have sufficed.

Sometimes, when people do not read scripts beforehand, we get weird effects that cause us to do double takes. In a programme where the topic was folklore, the person who was reciting childhood rhymes did not even realise that it is 'four' and not erbgħa, which rhymes with iż-żokra ta' Vitor.

• Reuben Zammit, newly-appointed television programmes manager for PBS, had this to say when asked about his immediate plans: "I am not a man of many words; moreover, I truly believe that actions speak louder then words. I am 'a television person', with 16 years of experience and programme production behind me.

"This has always been a labour of love to which I gave top priority. I can promise that I am ready to get involved in each and every production; I shall give all production teams the necessary backup and support, in order to help each and every programme evolve and fulfil the mission statement of the national broadcaster."

• By now, the formula behind Missjoni (Net Television) has become quite familiar - and some of the storylines are very interesting. Essentially, it's all about people from a halfway house (the one between earth and their eternal award) who have to earn their wings by intervening in the last days on earth of other people, in such a way as to help them patch up their quarrels and leave no unfinished business before they die.

However, the episode of March 31 looks set to be slightly different, albeit the 'hereafter' still features. The bumph for this episode reminds us that nobody knows anything about the fourth dimension; space and time are pliable.

This, indeed, is what makes Barabbas the star of the show in which Sylvana, Rodney, and the director, together with the assistant and the secretary who are pivotal to what happens, travel back in time to meet him, Pontius Pilate, the high priest, and other people who lived about 2,000 years ago.

This reminds me of a science fiction story that haunts me to this day. It was intimated that because of time travel, all the people who lined the streets on the way to Calvary were time travellers - the contemporary Jewish population was aware of the momentous tragedy that was being enacted, and everyone had opted to stay at home save for Mary and the apostles (which is why they did not recognise anyone).

• It is indeed a pity that certain columnists and commentators are still going to press, both about things concerning the media, and other events, without checking their facts first. People who pass on rumours might just have a hidden agenda - or, indeed, they could have invented the rumours themselves to see whether they are denied or not, by the parties they concern. It could be that they consider a libel case worth it, if some of the mud they sling, sticks to their target.

In a world where thrust-and-parry is the order of the day, sometimes it pays not to deny falsehoods - just as it pays to tell the truth when you know nobody will believe you.

television@timesofmalta.com