Political communication has evolved due to disruptions facilitated by the communication infrastructure and political culture: the media space is fragmented, the electorate unpredictable, and the hypermediated environment makes it feel like we are in a continuous state of campaigning.
A plethora of media platforms and a variety of political actors now operate in a decentralised milieu. Party ownership of the media is once again being questioned.
This time, it was Lou Bondi who suggested that party stations are redundant. His view went viral since it came from a founder of the PN’s Radio 101 and a former provocative TV personality.
Party media legitimacy was first questioned in 2006 by Italian journalist-turned-MEP Lily Gruber, who criticised Malta’s political and Church-controlled broadcasting stations. She highlighted to the European Commission an “anomaly” that, while media-party parallelism had weakened in many countries, Malta’s pluralism in broadcasting had strengthened it.
In February 2021, Chris Peregin, founder of Lovin Malta, contested the constitutionality of political party TV stations in court. The court ruled that the Malta Broadcasting Authority needed to regulate the news balance of party media.
I belonged to the chorus that resented the influence of these hegemonic entities when I embarked on my academic research in the mid-1990s. Historically, newspapers and political parties in Malta had evolved in symbiosis. However, I strongly resented the 1991 decision to allow them to branch out into broadcasting, taking polarisation to new peaks.
We hoped that broadcasting pluralism would modernise the media environment but optimism faded as the two main parties and the Church overcrowded the media sphere, limiting competition and diversification, especially when there were limited available frequencies, and the advertising pie was as small as the economy of our microstate permitted.
Over the years, my perspective adjusted to appreciate some positive aspects, namely that party papers and broadcasting helped keep citizens engaged with the political system in a world where democracy was threatened by voter disenchantment.
While we are usually overly obsessed with their political influence, the influence of commercial interests can actually be more insidious. These stations, born out of crowdfunding, had inspired volunteerism that served as a springboard for a generation of political players.
Moreover, the massive changes in political communications brought by social media platforms rendered the position of party media more bearable. As observed in the annual ‘State of the Nation’ survey, public opinion now seems to tolerate these stations as an endemic component of the political landscape.
Still, the question of whether party media are still useful is a pertinent one. Politicians now bypass legacy media, using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok to directly communicate with the public. There, they attempt to set the agenda and shape narratives without journalistic framing.
At face value, this provides voters with direct access to politics. But demediatisation presents challenges. Individuals frequently inhabit echo chambers, and precision targeting of individuals, based on algorithms that shape users’ experiences, may have eroded our critical competencies.
Many of us have little understanding of how posts are filtered, ranked and recommended. Since political communication is also driven by clickbaits, the arena is becoming more deprived of substantive political, economic and social debates.
Public opinion now seems to tolerate these stations as an endemic component of the political landscape- Carmen Sammut
Partisan media can serve as a useful platform, especially when they invite meaningful critical reflections.
The Maltese media sphere should ideally support a variety of media models, including advocacy and political media, to create a more representative, diverse and inclusive system. Despite efforts, we are still far from achieving this diversity, especially since many media organisations, even established ones, are struggling to find a viable business model that secures their existence.
Political parties face the challenging question of whether they can afford their media setups, which, while supportive, can also threaten the parties themselves. When the PN launched its television station in 1998, journalist Tony Mallia cautioned that the party was creating a “monster” that might eventually consume it.
In the 1990s, under Alfred Sant, the Labour Party sought to reduce its broadcasting media’s financial strain by granting it more autonomy. This entailed maintaining influence over the news and current affairs while boosting popular content to increase viewership.
These media ventures impact both the financial health of the parties and the broader democratic setting. A linked concern revolves around party vulnerability to big business and interest groups’ contributions to political campaigns and the consequences for party media sub-systems.
Each time the existence of party media is mentioned, fingers are pointed towards Public Broadcasting Services, with the assumption that parties need their own stations because PBS is short-changing them. Yet, none of the main parties allowed it to transition from a state broadcasting model to the public service paradigm.
Labour could have seized the opportunity to implement its pledged reforms given the supermajorities it obtained post-2013, which could have permitted courageous decision-making on many fronts. Grand promises made while a party is on the opposition benches included calls for better governance structures.
On both political flanks, there appears to be no appetite for substantive broadcasting reforms. Once a party gains power, it quickly forgets its former battle cries and appoints trusted individuals to key positions. Throughout the history of Rediffusion, Xandir Malta, and PBS, we have seen instances where external individuals were brought in without a public call, in abuse of public service requirements.
Faces frequently disappear from the screens under the guise of restructuring and downsizing or because they are somehow elbowed out, only to be replaced by new ones. Successive legislatures seek to redress and rectify the real or perceived wrongs of their predecessors, hence perpetuating a cycle of state power and control.
There is some hope in the European Media Freedom Act, which suggests more transparency and reforms at the governance level but implementation remains a national decision. So, at the moment, calls to shut down political party media and reform public broadcasting sound rather hollow.
Carmen Sammut is a professor of media and communication at the University of Malta.