Mind over natter

You have debased (my) child... You have made him a laughing stock of intelligence... a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere."

So said Dr Lee De Forest (1873-1961), the American inventor of the audion tube, when he was addressing the National Association of Broadcasters. And the peeve was considered important enough to be quoted in his obituary in Time magazine (dated July 7, 1963).

Famous words; the presidency of the European Union thought that it would be a good idea, last Monday, for Europe to halt in its tracks for at least three minutes, around noon, to express solidarity with the victims of the Madrid bombings.

From what I can gather, most of us did receive similar suggestions at our place of work. On the local media scene, it was only Net Television and Radio 101 that did not observe this; I was told that, whereas they had originally "given much thought" about doing something of the sort, they did not realise it would be a nationwide thing, perhaps because "nobody contacted them" and "they did not receive anything" and so went ahead with their schedules.

I was also told that one of my phone calls to the station had been bang in the middle of a meeting where it was being decided that the solidarity stop would take place, after all, but later, just before the 6 p.m. news bulletin; not because the mediadotlink people dance to a different drum from the rest of us lesser mortals, but just because they deemed that the opportune moment would be then.

Meanwhile, although I wasn't born yesterday, I have received a woollen balaclava that has no holes for the eyes, and the date, news bulletins have singularly (plurally?) failed to report sightings of sows migrating with the swallows.

At this juncture, I wonder why on earth Dr Alfred Sant complains about the way the Labour Party is allegedly treated by the Station of the Nation.

If the Nationalist Party media persists in shooting itself in the foot (see below), the MLP has its work cut out for it. But I wish Ray Azzopardi would remove the term Centrabu-ista from his vocabulary and say Centru Laburista instead.

THE liberalisation (read proliferation) of the media means that people are wont to play hopscotch across the airwaves. The social welfare programme on Super One Radio that goes out on Thursdays now has its counterpart on Smash Television, with, I take it, the same people behind - and fronting - presenting it.

Education 22's programme Toujours Francais is built around the innovative idea that a foreign language is learned through Maltese, rather than English.

Unfortunately, however, I get the feeling that the people who script it translate the vernacular from the English, rather than thinking in Maltese, which would be easier.

So we get such grammatical errors as indirizz ta' Franza; ic-cavetta hawn; ikla ta' filghodu, and so forth. What a pity.

It could well be renamed Preaching To The Converted; or perhaps Media Studies; How to Stretch The Truth Until It Springs Back.

Newsroom (Net Television), at least this week's offering, has all the makings of a propagandistic service, masquerading under the general umbrella of informatorial, which could easily become a case study in media manipulation and divisive reportage.

We had monochrome shots contrasting with others in Technicolor Glory. Clips of agitated people, pushing and shoving, at odds with others in which the participants of gatherings were staid and dignified.

Different types of background music meant to convey moods poles apart. Close-ups of faces explicitly chosen to complement opinions being given by the presenter. And more. Ironically, the repeat goes out on Sunday mornings, supposedly a time of peace and rest.

Just for the record, the May, 2003, issue of Pro-Life Times had reported that The House of Lords (Britain's highest Court) had ruled that the BBC had been within its rights to refuse to broadcast a party election film by the Pro-Life Alliance that depicted images of abortion on the grounds that the clips were "grossly offensive". Thus, an earlier ruling, that had found the BBC guilty of censorship, was overruled.

This was in the wake of a British channel that prides itself on being avant-garde, having screened an episode of cannibalism, as one recalls, and at a time when maimed or murdered victims of war were splurged all over the headlines and television bulletins.

Last week I had to get a whole packet of biscuits, to be shared by the politician who ma tkellimx b'mod veritier, the astronawti who have discovered a new planet, Romina Borg Bonaci who, when talking to Legal Procurator Sharon Mizzi told her that she was really lucid in her explanations, allavolja she is a woman.

The chap who came up with the slogan Hammeg u Hallas, for Jason Micallef's sponsorship scheme, the self-styled journalist who said that a colleague was "ink*****" for not managing to get his name on the front page of a certain newspaper, and Rachel Said whose televoting question was totally at odds with the tone of her programme, viz. Do you think the people responsible for the Madrid bombings deserve the capital punishment?

An episode of CSI, the hearing-impaired forensic detective, nailed a murderer by superimposing images of the jagged steel edges of a studio trailer step, a scar on the knee of an actor, and the stains on the sheet found at the scene of the crime, such that they matched perfectly.

A real version of CSI was less gory, but no less neat for that. Sfera had a male nurse bent on euthanasia being caught because he had phials of a particular potassium salt in his possession with more than one needle perforation in the membrane at the top.

Since each tube must be used only once, and then discarded, it meant that he had used each illegally, several times, to hasten the demise of those whom, he thought, ought to die. Sometimes, truth is stranger than fiction.

I caught an interview, on a foreign radio station, with a divorced Jewish man, living in France who had custody of his four Muslim children - they had taken their mother's faith. Two of his daughters had been expelled from their school for wearing "ostentatious religious symbols", in this case obviously the veil.

If this same ruling had to apply to local television stations, many people would be facing a similar ban, and be out on their ears; not for wearing a scarf (indeed, far from it), but because they have evolved these ostentatious religious symbols into a focal point of their outfit.