A decision not to broadcast journalists’ questions during a live news conference on TVM has exposed the urgent need for a radical overhaul of the regulator’s role, media expert Carmen Sammut said.

“The Broadcasting Authority cannot remain a political ping-pong ball. When it celebrates its 60th birthday in the coming year, it is time to give it a rejuvenating makeover… or perhaps a retirement plan in anticipation of reincarnation,” the professor said.

She floated the idea of having one watchdog incorporating broadcasting and the communication authorities in order to streamline the laws and licences which govern information and media services.

Sammut was speaking to Times of Malta after she was asked for her views about the recent BA ruling, which resulted in TVM not showing the second part of a news conference addressed by Deputy Prime Minister Chris Fearne on fresh COVID-19 restrictions.

The broadcast was stopped as soon as the minister was going to take the journalists’ questions.

The authority justified its move on grounds that it was legally obliged by Article 119 of the constitution to ensure political impartiality as far as possible. It argued that “unexpected questions” which could turn a broadcast of national importance into a platform for political statements could not be screened.

The decision was taken following complaints the Nationalist Party had made about a live news conference addressed by Prime Minister Robert Abela last May.

The authority’s drastic measure prompted criticism from the Institute of Journalists, which branded the move a form of “state-sponsored censorship”.

‘Fossilised BA’

Sammut said this controversy had to be taken in the context of the fact that the authority was operating within a highly polarised framework, which dated back to 1961 when it was established.

Since then the media landscape had changed with the advent of pluralism in 1991, the setting up of political stations and new forms of media.

“The BA risks becoming fossilised because Maltese society has evolved and the authority has not. It appears to be detached from a vibrant civil society and from minority groups that represent a growing diversity,” she said.

The authority, she added, fell short of prior commitments to work in tune with women’s demands for greater visibility.

“Times have changed with the widespread use of interactive smart technologies that impacted the way media content is produced, disseminated and consumed.”

Maltese society has evolved and the authority has not

Meanwhile, shrinking financial resources were threatening media pluralism.

“While this was unfolding, the BA’s role was reduced mainly to that of a watchdog guarding an illusory balance between two parties; an obsession that is politically correct but socially unjust. The COVID-19 pandemic has brutally exposed all this.”

It was the “acquired fetish with balance” that led to the BA’s decision to stop short the recent TVM broadcast, she said.

She noted how some of the criticism had come from political quarters which had, after all, contributed to this state of affairs: BA’s present-day condition was shaped by the political past.

While constitutional amendments were long overdue, the current malaise indicated it was high time to walk the talk, Sammut said.

‘Immunity from scrutiny’

File photo: Judge Giovanni Bonello

Asked for his opinion from a strictly legal perspective, former European Court of Human Rights Judge Giovanni Bonello declined to go into the merits of the case itself on the grounds that broadcasting did not fall within his area of expertise.

However, he said that on the face of it, it seemed that the BA’s decision did not seem to be an exercise to ensure balance but to ensure immunity from scrutiny.

“You do not foster freedom of expression by gagging both the pros and the cons.  

“I reject the notion that democratic freedoms are promoted by imposing even-handed silence. The democratic answer is never increased censorship, but increased discourse,” Bonello said.

No qualms to face the media

Minister Carmelo Abelo. Photo: Mark Zammit Cordina

Minister Carmelo Abela, who is politically responsible for the national broadcaster, said the government had no qualms about facing journalists during live events of national importance.

He noted that this issue only cropped up in the wake of the Nationalist Party’s complaints as, until recently, such events used to be broadcast in their entirety.

“Now that the BA, as an autonomous body established by the constitution, has ruled on the matter, the PN is complaining again,” he noted.

While until this week the government was airing press conferences of national interest in their entirety on its social media channels, one understood that the PN would have no further objections to the airing of such transmissions on PBS and other media stations, Abela said.