A long-standing legal provision that, at least prima facie, appears to be in direct contrast with the spirit of the constitution, is finally destined to be settled by the court.
The constitution demands that the Broadcasting Authority ensures “due impartiality” with regard to matters of political or industrial controversy or those relating to current public policy.
It also lays down that this function “shall be without prejudice to such other functions and duties as may be conferred upon it by any law for the time being in force in Malta”.
It so happens that the broadcasting law introduced a very specific and convenient caveat in this regard.
The two parties agreed in parliament that impartiality with regard to news and matters of a political or industrial controversy and current public policy should only be practised by the public broadcasting service and that the general output of programmes broadcast by all other licencees should be considered as a whole.
In other words, the law argues that all stations bar PBS, including, of course, those owned by the political parties, will balance themselves out.
That is the bone of contention, which has been present since the early 1990s, when the Nationalist administration had introduced broadcasting pluralism.
In early 2004, Chief Justice Emeritus Joseph Said Pullicino, in his capacity as chairman of the broadcasting watchdog, had deemed it “a pity that pluralism in Malta has amplified political polarisation; TV stations owned by political parties were, and still are, considered to be propaganda machines.
“They still fail to understand that it is only in their interest to give a balanced and objective service to people”.
In her doctoral thesis in early 2014, Joanna Spiteri, the present Broadcasting Authority’s chief executive officer, found there was “consensus that broadcasting regulations should be the same for all the broadcasting stations”.
She also concluded, among other things, that: “In its present form, the regulatory system is not assisting in providing a fair and accurate news media service mainly because it is allowing the political stations to continue to produce news reporting which is very often economical with the truth.”
In a discussion paper later that same year, the now defunct The Today Public Policy Institute, a think tank, commented that the interpretation given by the broadcasting regulator to the ‘exemption’ clause “effectively and conveniently ensures that the impartiality of the news which is broadcast by the two political party television stations is not regulated for political bias. The political bias of the two stations is simply assumed to create a form of balance.”
A court decision on the matter will, therefore, be welcome, even more so if it sparks a thorough reform within both the Broadcasting Authority and Public Broadcasting Services.
The composition and function of the broadcasting watchdog require urgent attention.
Partisan interests and influence continue to prevail when what the country needs and deserves is a regulator that is fit for purpose in a post-truth and fake-news world that increasingly lays stress on freedom of expression and hates censorship.
That may be quite a challenge but the real tough nut to crack is PBS, which, rather than a balanced state broadcaster, retains the label of ‘its master’s voice’, the master being the political party in power.
There are regulatory but also practical issues affecting broadcasting.
Dissecting the problem, dealing with the different aspects and then adopting a holistic approach is long overdue. One hopes the court decision on the ‘exemption’ clause will set the ball rolling.