Thomas Jefferson, a founding father of the United States and its third president once wrote that “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle”.
It could be that Jefferson was having a tough time with newspapers and so wanted to rubbish them. That’s the nature of politicians. They love the media when they control it, they hate it when it criticises them.
Tony Blair is another such example. The erstwhile darling of the media called it a “feral beast” in his last speech as Prime Minister. Then he told Lord Justice Leveson that he had a unique opportunity to at last “drain the poison” from the media with his inquiry into press ethics.
Politicians are not the only class of people that believe that the media are all-powerful. Author Jess C. Scott has one of his characters in Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody say that “People are sheep. TV is the shepherd”.
Most politicians probably agree. That is why the media are never distant from their agenda. In recent weeks, for example, Chris Fearne, Robert Abela and Adrian Delia made different, albeit opposing, proposals for the way forward of the media in Malta.
English website for the PL
Fearne and Abela feel that the Labour Party does not get a good deal from the independent media. During the leadership campaign Fearne said that the PL need a news portal in English to redress the situation.
When one analyses the history of the role of political parties in Malta’s mediascape one notices that the Nationalist Party and the PL owned ‘English’ newspapers, as did the General Workers’ Union and the Church. But all these initiatives by all these institutions floundered. Similar was the fate of Maltastar, a news website published by Labour in English in 2001.
The reason why has never been studied in depth. My hypothesis is that it could be that those who prefer reading in English tend to be more critical than those who prefer reading media in Maltese and that these institutions were unable to produce a product that satisfies a critical audience.
The PL should reflect well were it now to consider embarking on the initiative proposed by Fearne.
Playing the underdog card
Both Fearne and Abela played the ‘underdog card’. This is a card played repeatedly and regularly since the 1950s by the Partit Laburista. It seems that Fearne and Abela believe that the PL is not even given a fair deal by PBS.
It is incredible but true that they said it. Abela and Fearne even attacked and blamed individuals who have been out of PBS for years. Xarabank came in for an unfair dose of flak, thus returning the PL to the mentality of Alfred Sant’s era when the party used to boycott Xarabank. Could it be that nothing was learned from that futile strategy?
PBS should be licensed by the Broadcasting Authority and not by government
How can one take these gentlemen seriously when they say that they are not getting a fair deal from PBS? Could it be that they are not happy enough with massive propaganda emanating from the PBS newsroom and, like Oliver Twist they ask for more?
Even if this was just political rhetoric to endear them with the core vote it was rhetoric that makes no sense and leads to no good. The fact that the Prime Minister decided to keep PBS as part of his responsibilities seems that he will pass from talk to action. If the action follows what he was saying before his election then the future of public service broadcasting can be a very dim one.
Dismantling party stations
Adrian Delia and the PN, on the other hand, are proposing a restructuring of the Broadcasting Authority and PBS Ltd so that political parties would not need to own broadcasting stations.
Fearne immediately fired back the salvo that “just because they (the PN) cannot afford theirs, they want us to dismantle ours”. But then he added a comment which points to the crux of the problem: “If we return to Opposition, no one will guarantee that the State broadcaster will be fair with us.”
A transitory provision
Broadcasting pluralism was introduced by Eddie Fenech Adami in the 1990s. The PL was the first party to start radio broadcasting and then lobbied for an amendment to the Broadcasting Act permitting political parties (and others) to own a television station besides a radio station. The government agreed and the PL was the first party to set up a TV station. The PN followed suit some four years later.
The granting of a broadcasting licence to political parties was the legitimate answer to particular historical situations. But for Eddie Fenech Adami (see interview with The Times, December 2, 1998) the ownership of broadcasting organisation by political parties was meant to be a transitory phase which should end when the management of politics matures.
Have we reached that level of maturity?
A radical restructuring of PBS and the BA
No one can realistically expect political parties to part with their stations unless there is a radical restructuring both of the Broadcasting Authority and PBS Ltd in such a way that a level playing field is assured.
When the Broadcasting Authority was set up in 1961 its board was not made up by members chosen by the political parties.
That method of choosing members was a latter development and a welcome one when it happened. Today Malta has evolved once more. The BA board should respect the current socio-cultural environment in which civil society in its various forms has a strong presence. Moreover, the BA’s board should definitively have a strong presence of media experts chosen because of their expertise.
In the introduction to the book Navigating the Maltese Mediascape, which I edited jointly with Mary Anne Lauri and which Kite just published, we made two proposals for the re-structuring of PBS to move on from being the State broadcaster to a real public broadcaster. The first proposal is that PBS should be licensed by the Broadcasting Authority and not by the government.
Government should not own PBS
A more radical proposal is that the government should not be the owner of PBS. This would definitively distance the company from government and guarantee the highest possible measure of editorial independence.
The Swedish public broadcaster, for example, is owned by an independent foundation. It used to be financed by the licence fee but since January 1, 2019 it is financed by an individual public service fee paid by everyone over 18 years of age and collected via the tax system.
The financing of the service is essential as a public service broadcaster that is mainly financed by commercial means loses much of its ethos.
Currently the Swedes are revisiting their model as part of a process of constitutional reform. They want to access whether the public service broadcaster’s independence is sufficiently guaranteed through the current regulations or whether their independence can and should be further strengthened through amendments to the constitution.
I do not advocate a simple copy and paste reproduction of the Swedish or of any model but I do encourage thinking outside of the box if as a country we wish to really move forward in this sector.