George Bush must be infinitely glad he was not holding a press conference in Holland. However, I still wonder why everyone waited for the other shoe to drop, before apprehending Muntadar al-Zaidi. What if the missiles had been grenades?

My maternal grandmother, who spent her childhood in Alexandria, used to tell us that in Eastern culture, especially in the Muslim world, it is considered rude to even show the sole of your shoes to another person. This would imply that you consider the person no better than the dirt on which he walks, and is symbolic of treading upon him.

That is why it is unthinkable to cross your legs ankle on knee. Shoes, being considered ritually unclean, are carried in the left hand with the soles of the shoes pressed together, and placed on the floor at the entrance to a mosque. Prayer is done barefoot, with feet freshly washed. The fact that Bush joked about the shoes being a "Size 10" indicates that he is not aware of this cultural nuance.

To my knowledge, none of the above was explained on local television; nobody thought of getting an imam to explain the gesture. No one thought of covering last Tuesday's conference in Washington D.C. by the Iraqi Ambassador to the United States, Samir Sumaida'ie, in which women from Codepink held signs reading 'Free al-Zaidi' and 'al-Zaidi speaks for me'. The Ambassador called al-Zaidi's act disgraceful and said the journalist was lucky that he didn't try something like that under Saddam Hussein.

It has been reported that Al-Zaidi's brother Dargham said the journalist suffered a broken arm, broken ribs, and internal bleeding while in custody. This, so soon after the International Federation of Journalists marked the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by emphasising its commitment to the recognition of journalists' rights to personal safety.

Is it possible that silly local happenings are given more significance than such events of international import?

Meanwhile, it was to be expected that Conan O'Brien, Craig Ferguson and Jay Leno would have a field day with this incident. Again, they totally disregarded the cultural aspects and concentrated on the 'free shoes for Sarah Palin' and 'Dodgeball' facets.

Another potential item for the news bulletins that Maltese television stations did not pick up, but which the news on Rai Uno featured in the Sunday evening news bulletin and in La Vita in Diretta, was about Lino Banfi.

This popular Italian actor was awarded a honoris causa degree in Scienza delle Comunicazione by the University of St Cyril, the seat of which is in Valletta. The honour was conferred upon 'Il Nonno dell'Italia' in Rome on December 5.

TVM's Sunday 6 p.m. news highlights for people with hearing impairment contains exactly the same clips as the one for those with no auditory problems. This reinforces the impression that people have 'special' rather than 'different' needs. Moreover, both sessions are broadcast back-to-back. The bulletins could be amalgamated and more items included.

I know at least of two separate instances where a mother, and a grandparent, first heard of a traffic accident involving a member of their family through the media. That is why I found it distasteful that in the aforementioned bulletin, we were given the name of the person who lost his life in an accident. The number plate of one of the vehicles involved was not digitally altered, and a woman patently in a state of shock was easily recognisable.

I hear that preparations - on the lines of special editions of currently existing programmes and even arrangements falling under the umbrella heading 'Home thoughts from abroad' - are well under way from the impending L-Istrina.

The Broadcasting Authority has seen it fit to issue another notice about the 'Requirements as to standards and practice as to advertisements, methods of advertising and directions on public collections on the broadcasting media', delineating the standards and methods that ought to be followed by this and telethons of a lesser scale.

However, this still does not explain why nit-picking fines get slapped upon production houses that go out of their way to have different sets for different sections of programmes on stations that are not (supposed to be) political; whereas repetitively boring contents of certain magazine programmes are allowed to flow, uncommented.

I cannot help noticing how certain presenters try to indicate that they are more important than their guests by giving them uncomfortable seating, while they sit at a higher level in The King and I fashion.

And the slaying of the vernacular goes on, with the verbs 'to go' and 'to make' gaining auxiliary status compared to that of 'to be', 'to do' and 'to have'. So we had ghamilha ghall-finali (made it to the finals) and imorru ghall-Ahdar (they go for Green), as well as several other errors.

The mispronunciation of several proper and common nouns, in the same programmes, by different people, will keep recurring unless a phonetics chart is handed out. What say vaj-timins, vit-tahmins, and vaj-tah-mins, as if the word vitamini, does not exist?

television@timesofmalta.com