Democracy requires public broadcasting. We don’t have it. We have a State-owned, government-controlled company that curates the government’s message and tells people what to think.

It is true that the public broadcaster does not enjoy a monopoly and citizens can acquire their information from other sources to make up their mind. But if the public broadcaster is merely “another voice” in the cacophony of thinly veiled agendas that surrounds us, why have it all?

The misnomer ‘State-broadcaster’ is used to justify the capture of TVM by the government du jour. A few days ago, I watched a BBC reporter doorstepping a UK minister using their skilful questioning to dismantle the puerile excuses for organising office parties during a COVID-19 lockdown. At first I admired the interviewer. And then I remembered I have never seen a TVM reporter do that.

TVM journalists do not ask probing questions. Enabling prompts to give some politician a platform to read from their script are not questions in the journalistic sense. The only questions that should matter are the questions that make politicians uncomfortable, that force them to struggle to give a reply, that holds them to account.

It’s not just the absence of questions in door-stepping situations. I struggle to recall even a single proper journalistic investigation by the national broadcaster. It is no wonder many believe that TVM reports with the benefit of instructions (tacit or explicit) from ministers.This is truly appalling.

“Dare we ask Minister Owen Bonnici to introduce reforms that deny his government a televised puppet and give the people a truly public broadcaster”

The problem with our public broadcaster goes beyond the poor quality of news-making. We need a public broadcaster because the interests of privately-owned stations leave out content that deserves to be exposed. In normal democracies, privately-owned stations have commercial interests and because of those they will drop content that does not make them money. Public stations use public money to make up for that.

We have a different problem here. TVM’s competitors are not motivated commercially but politically. TVM then should be making up for what political stations leave out.

There were two glaring reminders of what is missing from all TV stations in this country during the recent papal visit. Every moment of Pope Francis’s stay in Malta was televised by TVM, proving, if any evidence were needed, that the station and its staff are perfectly capable of delivering, in a technical sense, high-quality broadcasting. But TVM didn’t get to write the Pope’s script.

Consider the now notorious papal remarks urging Malta to fight corruption. 

Few failed to notice that Francis’s admonition, so significant in Malta’s political climate, was entirely ignored by TVM (and largely ignored by the other TV stations owned by organisations the Pope was challenging to deal properly with corruption). What was uncomfortable for political stations to report should have been a priority for the national station, precisely because it was uncomfortable for political stations.

The other, perhaps less obvious, incident was the visit the Pope made to migrants living in Ħal Far. Francis shared his microphone with two young black men who arrived here on boats and were branded “illegal” or “clandestine”. They told their story, why they left their homes, how they got here, how they were treated along the way. 

The moment was remarkable because it was nearly unprecedented. Political parties are not likely to use their stations to give a voice to people deprived even of the right to vote for them. 

TVM should be making up for that, seeking out the voiceless in our community and giving them a platform, promote understanding among people for whom Malta is home.

In place of a media company that promotes mutual understanding, that educates and entertains, that acts as a national conscience, and that challenges political dogma, we’re left with yet another resource in the apparently infinite arsenal of propaganda vehicles paid for by citizens at the service of their government.

It was worrying to read that the Broadcasting Authority recently ruled it was not for it to do anything about TVM when a personalised papal warning against corruption delivered to our politicians to their face was omitted from the news. 

If the authority cannot do anything, if the government won’t do anything, if the journalists and producers at TVM would rather not do anything, then who will?

Dare we ask Minister Owen Bonnici to introduce reforms that deny his government a televised puppet and give the people a truly public broadcaster?