Pride in prejudice

In one of his saner moments, the Mad March Hare has a meaningful conversation with Alice, the topic being saying what you mean and meaning what you say.

In the end, no one can do that but yourself, so it was rather strange of Mr John Inguanez, writing again last week, to try to deduce the agenda of my musings. My point was that his words incriminated Alfred Dreyfus when he could have added the rider "...only to be completely exonerated later".

I repeat that this kind of thing is especially important in Malta where "I heard it on the media (or I read it in the newspaper)" assumes the mantle of evangelical truth. We all know how the phrase "trial by media" is now part of the language. So, for that matter, are 'international treaties' and 'domestic laws' and 'transparency'... but little do some of us care.

Whereas Jeremy Sivits was the first US soldier to face trial over the abuses at Abu Ghraib jail, receiving a three-year sentence, Charles Graner was regarded as the ringleader at the centre of the abuse scandal. The latter has been sentenced to 10 years in jail, with a dishonourable discharge from the army.

What will be the equivalent for all those who were involved in the fracas at Safi Barracks last week, which, when all is said and done, was just like a dromedary resignedly waiting for the last straw?

The Third World Group, the Koperattiva Kummerc Gust and Kopin rightly condemned the release of the vicious, probably racist, genie from the bottle on January 13 by people who are untrained upon others who wanted a haven but practically ended up in Hotel California (....you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave...).

Amnesty International described the clampdown by members of the Armed Forces as replete with "deliberate and gratuitous violence", rather as if they were itching to try out their riot gear in a real-life situation rather than in their barracks training, in a situation for which they had not been psychologically prepared.

Last year the Beeb dropped the cartoon satire Popetown after more than 6,000 Catholics complained before they had even seen it. The show, starring Ruby Wax and MacKenzie Crook, would have featured the Pope on a pogo stick surrounded by a gang of backstabbing cardinals. So this year, they went one better... or rather worse.

Director-general Mark Thompson has defended the decision to screen the controversial musical Jerry Springer - the Opera ("inspired by the eponymous television show") declaring that he did not find it blasphemous, although he was a practising Christian.

After critics have complained that the show features 8,000 swear words, one of its co-creators, comedian Stewart Lee, insisted that the amount of swearing in the show amounted to a paltry 451 - much fewer than the number calculated by pressure group Mediawatch, since this organisation had multiplied each utterance of a swear word by the number of people who sang in the chorus line; but who's counting?

"It is going to go out at 10 p.m., one hour after the watershed, on BBC2 and not on BBC1," said Mr Thompson, as if the question of a time-band gave absolution for this obscenity.

Could it be that deep down in the void where their souls are supposed to be, these people realise that something is not on? "An hour-long programme is going out before it putting [the show] into context, and we will be making it very clear to people that it does include a great deal of strong language." Ah. As the bishop of Manchester, Nigel McCulloch, the Anglican Church's spokesman on broadcasting, has said, "My worry is that this programme is a major departure from the current high expectations of viewers regarding offensive material on a publicly-funded public service channel. Are you listening, PBS?

Incidentally, the show's "star" is the inappropriately surnamed David Soul, half the Starsky and Hutch duo of yore, who is also a Christian. "Believe me, this show would never have got to where it is today if it was simply about blasphemy and bad language," he told Radio 4's Today programme. Of course it isn't; there is also a tap dance routine by the Ku Klux Klan.

I have often had cause to complain about news bulletins offered on local stations; some of them are too politically-biased, and others are stale, mainly because they would have been recorded hours before they are broadcast, thus belying the word 'news' itself.

For instance, some stations did not even report that that His Grace the Siro-Archbishop Casmoussa had been kidnapped - and only started reporting that the Vatican had issued a statement about it when he had already been released.

About the last thing schoolchildren want to do after a week's work is more of the same; however, the people behind Brejk (Super One, with a repeat on Sunday mornings) appear to think otherwise.

The format is supposed to indicate that the programme is ostensibly shot from the bedroom of one of the presenters, Corazôn, who kept begging people to SMS her. She also made it amply clear that the other girl, Corinne, was only there to play second fiddle, not least by bumping into her several times and never apologising, doing most of the talking, and, at one juncture, doing a high-five with Brian over her head. The third presenter, Brian had the brief to make AD(H)D appear funny - it isn't.

By the end of the Sunday repeat, e-mails were being rejected, perhaps because the inbox had not been emptied; by Tuesday morning, the website wasn't even available.

The credits of the programme were lifted straight from Elizir: At least two people named there were not involved (this fault had to be corrected after the deadline for this column). Ruth Vella of Super One said that this unfortunate mistake happened because there is no "continuity announcer as such" on Super One television, and that the inscriber could not be corrected (but someone has to type down what goes on it, in the first place, and someone else has to check that the details are correct).

And I haven't even mentioned the young female ballroom dancer's costume yet.