After a brief and uninspiring electoral campaign, the attention shifted quickly from the foregone Labour Party landslide to the papal visit.
Undoubtedly, these two events meant busy months for the state broadcaster. TVM has been on the receiving end of justifiable claims of bias in its reporting, now a standard feature of the state’s main communication organ.
But standards have dipped sharply since the appointment of Norma Saliba as head of news, eradicating the more balanced and inclusive reporting seen under Reno Bugeja. This saw the relegation of several important issues to the tail end of each bulletin in favour of scores of features about ministerial inaugurations, government projects and other propaganda.
Moreover, TVM’s website and social media sites have been criticised for its attempts to normalise or otherwise diminish the importance of serious issues and accidents.
The resort to clickbait techniques has seen the site publish a lot of inconsequential news items, instead of reporting on political, social and environmental issues.
This is a classic bread-and-circuses tactic which allows the government to divert discourse about key issues. Yet, the papal visit provided us viewers – and taxpayers – with two new lows which make TVM unworthy of its membership in the European Broadcasting Union.
The pope’s words against greed, speculation and corruption were incredibly omitted from state TV. Comparisons with what happens in Russia, or even North Korea, are fully justified.
Merely a week after an election which saw virtually no mention of the construction overdrive, social inequality and poverty, the national broadcaster censored a speech of one of the world’s moral leaders, whose visit to Malta was the subject of much pomp and preparation.
This was a self-defeating measure in its fullest. The pope’s speech was broadcast live, reported across numerous news sites around the world. By omitting it from its reporting, TVM broadcast far and wide its spectacular failure to inform and educate and its deliberate silencing of uncomfortable truths.
The state broadcaster, however, did include the thoughts of fascist hatemonger Norman Lowell’s Imperium Europa, whose histrionics were afforded prime time minutes. This is not the first time TVM has decided to give certain figures more importance than, for example, activists in civil society.
In one particular instance, journalist Mario Xuereb had admirably cautioned and openly challenged Lowell on the use of hate speech during a televised interview. This commendable and rarely seen stance was wiped away when his bosses decided Lowell’s words were worthier than the pope’s. TVM may have run out of uncensored news items with which to fill its bulletins.
However, it irresponsibly chose to give airtime to right-wing sentiments instead of those of a pope who has spoken against the ills of society: greed, speculation, racism and hatred. Coupled with mounting claims that ministers have been directly dabbling in news reports before they are aired does not bode well for the new government. The hypocrisy of a prime minister beaming throughout his encounter with Pope Francis, before censoring his guest’s speech, is indeed of biblical proportions.
It is therefore understandable why many are questioning the signal sent by appointing Owen Bonnici as minister for public broadcasting, a man found guilty by a court of breaching the right of freedom of expression in his repeated orders to clean up the memorial to Daphne Caruana Galizia.
By allowing himself to censor the pope, Abela is entrenching himself into power. With more power comes more arrogance, not the promised humility.