After years of non-compliance from broadcasters, mostly the political ones, the Broadcasting Authority has finally decided to get tough and enforce its guidelines on news and current affairs broadcasts. But are the guidelines as tough as they seem or are they merely a smoke screen to protect the status quo? Charlot Zahra investigates
When on 23 October, the Broadcasting Authority (BA) published its proposals on enforcing the guidelines on news and current affairs, it expressed its concern that “the overall level of adherence to the provisions of these guidelines has not been satisfactory”.
The authority proposed taking steps so that various provisions of the guidelines would become legally enforceable.
As in the case with the Code on Advertising, the Broadcasting Authority proposes different penalty rates would be applicable for breaches of these provisions, depending on the gravity of the offence.
The Broadcasting Authority is proposing to enforce the provisions in the guidelines that deal with reconstruction material, rights of respect and privacy, filming and recording in institutions, filming on police operations, fairness to innocent parties, hidden microphones and cameras, and violence in the news.
Also enforceable will be provisions on children’s rights, promotional material in the news, interviews (including their editing and recording) and current affairs discussion programmes.
The BA will also enforce provisions regarding the general obligations and contractual obligations of independent producers.
However, important provisions such as those regarding the integrity and responsibility of the broadcaster, accuracy and impartiality, location reporting and guidelines on how media releases are to be reported, are not going to be enforced (see separate story).
Asked why these provisions, BA Chief Executive Kevin Aquilina said that the authority “still very much believes” in the relevance of those provisions in the guidelines.
“However at this stage the authority thinks that the matter therein contained should be left to self-regulation by the stations themselves,” he said.
The guidelines have a specific section relating to the public service broadcaster.
Producers of news and current affairs programmes should have no outside interests or commitments which could damage the public service broadcaster’s reputation for impartiality, fairness and integrity.
The provisions stress that those known to the public primarily as presenters of, or reporters on, news programmes or programmes about current affairs, broadcast on the public service broadcaster, must be seen to be impartial.
It is important that no off-air activity, including writing, the giving of interviews or the making of speeches, leads to any doubt about their objectivity on-air.
If such presenters or reporters publicly express personal views off-air on controversial issues, then their on-air role may be severely compromised.
It is crucial that in both their work with the public service broadcaster and in other non-public broadcasting activities such as writing, speaking or giving interviews, they do not state how they vote or express support for any political party; express views for or against any policy which is a matter of current party political debate; advocate any particular position or an issue of current party political debate; advocate any particular position on an issue of current public controversy or debate; or exhort a change in high profile public policy.
Asked whether these provisions also apply to farmed-out programmes on PBS, Dr Aquilina said: “The provisions of paragraphs 18 and 19 of the guidelines are matters to be governed by employment/contractual relationships between the public service broadcaster and the individual journalist concerned (including independent producers).
“The authority is not in a position to enforce these provisions because it could end up being in breach of the provisions of article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms if it were to do so itself,” he said.
Provisions that will not be enforced
• Journalists and broadcasters must guard their own integrity and credibility in order to be able to act freely and independently of forces which may exert undue influence and impair free and balanced judgment
• Officials in a political party, campaigning organisation or lobby group should not be involved in news gathering, production and presentation of news and current affairs programmes
• Errors must be quickly acknowledged and publicly corrected
• Opinion should be clearly distinguishable from fact
• A broadcaster should ensure that principal divergent points are reflected in a single news bulletin when the issue involved is of a current and active controversy
• It shall not be permissible for the broadcaster to claim that news bulletins on other channels will ensure that opposing views will be heard
• A news bulletin should avoid looking like a notice board and, more importantly, as if it forms part of an organisation’s propaganda machine
• In dealing with major matters of controversy, a broadcaster must ensure that justice is done to a full range of divergent views and perspectives during the period in which the controversy is active
• In a news bulletin, news should be presented with accuracy and without bias. It should not be editorial and should not be selected for the purpose of furthering or hindering either side of a controversial public issue
• News should not be designed by the belief, opinions or desires of the broadcaster or others engaged in its preparation or delivery
• A news item has to be factual or at the very least based on fact. Conjectures, distortions, remarks, opinions, judgments or convictions should not be allowed
• Editorial opinion shall be clearly labelled as such and kept entirely distinct from regular broadcasts of news bulletins.
The broadcasters’ reaction
The Malta Independent asked the four major television stations on the island for their reaction about the news guidelines.
PBS chief executive Albert Debono said that the editorial board led by John Camilleri had met on 2 November to discuss the guidelines.
“We have had a preliminary discussion and given we have till 1 December to give our reactions to the Broadcasting Authority, we shall continue with our internal discussions before providing any formal reaction,” he said.
There was no reply to our two other questions asking whether PBS agreed with the provisions specifically referring to the public service broadcaster in the draft news guidelines.
Louiselle Vassallo, Media Manager, Media.Link Communications, operators of NET Television and Radio 101, owned by the Nationalist Party, said the draft guidelines were currently being discussed within the company. “A more official stand will be communicated at a later stage, before the deadline given by the BA,” she said.
Asked whether she agreed with the provision that officials in a political party, campaigning organisation or lobby group should not be involved in news gathering, production and presentation of news and current affairs programmes, Ms Vassallo said that she would tend to agree in principle.
However, she said she found this notion “somewhat unrealistic, especially when one considers the local scenario”.
She explained that any medium is subject to ownership, be it political, commercial, religious, or otherwise, thus a “political” agenda is invariably put into practice.
This, said Ms Vassallo, leads to the concept that viewers/listeners are “better off” having an “informed sense of judgment – in that they know ‘where’ the information is coming from.”
Secondly, she claimed, one must also consider that many an “independent” journalist is in fact part of some lobby group or other, which leads to the question “where does one draw the line? And will this lead to more instances of underground activists/lobby groups?” asked Ms Vassallo.
One Television and Smash Television did not reply to the questions put by The Malta Independent by the time this article was written.
Different yardstick for political television stations
Lou Bondi, director of Where’s Everybody? and presenter of Bondiplus, a current affairs programme on TVM, said that if the Broadcasting Authority was to fulfil its constitutional mission, its new guidelines on current affairs programmes must be transparent, applicable equally to all and designed to encourage, and not shackle, free discussion in European Malta.
“Unfortunately at present, the BA will not and perhaps cannot fulfil these three fundamental criteria,” Mr Bondi said. “The BA applies the law in one way to current affairs programmes on political stations and in a completely different, sometimes opposing, way to the same type of programmes on PBS. “Furthermore, BA board members are effectively nominated by the two political parties wearing one hat as parliamentarians and another hat as station owners. The result is that political parties appoint the men and women who are supposed to impartially regulate their own stations.
“The result of this institutional mess is that the BA is no longer fulfilling its constitutional role of overseeing broadcasting in the Malta. It watches PBS like a hawk on journalistic and current affairs matters and then permits the political stations to get away with the most horrendous journalistic atrocities.
“This is simply unfair, un-European and makes a complete mockery of broadcasting in a contemporary democracy,” Mr Bondi said.
Mr Bondi said he agreed with the provision in the guidelines that producers of news and current affairs programmes on the public service broadcaster should have no outside interests or commitments which could damage the public service broadcaster’s reputation for impartiality, fairness and integrity.
“This principle should be embraced not only by those who work with or give a journalistic service to PBS but by any serious journalist. Indeed, some argue that privately-owned media are even more susceptible to pressure from outside interests than public broadcasters.”
Mr Bondi questioned the concept of “outside interests or commitments” put forward by the BA. “If they have commercial interests in mind, I should be very confused. In the recent past the BA itself hired Godfrey Grima, a journalist who runs an advertising and marketing company to present its own current affairs programmes. So I really don’t understand what the BA is talking about.”
He said the real problem lies elsewhere. “It arises from the simple fact that two of the three main TV stations – NET and ONE TV – cannot by definition be free of ‘outside interests’ because they are owned by political parties. Their interests are not journalistic but political. They can never uphold a ‘reputation for impartiality, fairness and integrity’ because they are part to their respective party propaganda machines.
“Not to mention that the parties are distorting the advertising market by exercising unnatural influences on it. And yet the BA skips along merrily as if everything is fine and dandy in television land,” said Mr Bondi.
For Mr Bondi, the most “offensive” guideline being proposed by the BA is that a PBS current affairs programme presenter or journalist cannot “express views for or against any policy which is a matter of current party political debate” or “advocate any particular position on an issue of current public controversy or debate” in everyday life, when he or she is not presenting a programme.
“First of all, this amounts to a deplorable restriction on freedom of speech and as a result I have serious doubts whether the guideline is even legal. If it comes into force, for instance, I would not be allowed to express the comments I am giving you right now since the running of the BA is a matter of political controversy.
“Whether PBS current affairs presenters or journalists should express opinions in other media on matters of public controversy is none of the BA’s business. It is a matter to be dealt with only through the employer/employee relationship,” insisted Mr Bondi. He said there is nothing in the law which allows the BA to discriminate between PBS presenters/journalists and other presenters on all the other stations.
“The BA allows Charlon Gouder to raise money for the MLP during the party fund-raising marathons while he presents a current programme on ONE TV. With the new guidelines, the BA will continue to allow him to do so.
“But according to the same BA ‘guidelines’ I, as a presenter of a PBS current affairs programme, would not be able to even write a letter to a newspaper saying that I am, for instance, in favour of Malta’s EU membership.”
Finally, Mr Bondi criticised “the cherry on this rotten cake”: that is, the fact that Reno Borg, a BA board member, writes a weekly piece of “relentless anti-government and pro-MLP propaganda” in l-orizzont.
“In other words, with this guideline, a man who is proposing to give himself the power to book me, fine me, perhaps have me fired from PBS for expressing an opinion on matters of public controversy in everyday life, is himself doing exactly that every week.
“This is a complete perversion of what the Broadcasting Authority and the law are all about. And there is no way that we are going to take such injustices lying down.”
‘The authority is admitting it cannot impose great part of its own guidelines’
Karl Schembri, chairman of the Journalists Committee (JC) said the guidelines in themselves were “mostly reasonable and basic journalistic ethics” already declared in other codes of ethics which journalists should seek to adhere to, but which should remain largely an exercise in self-regulation.
He said the situation was exacerbated by the fact that the authority was itself admitting it cannot impose a great part of its own guidelines, particularly those which would impinge mostly on the political stations.
“For example, the guidelines say, sensibly, that officials in a political party should not be involved in news gathering and that news bulletins should be fair and balanced in themselves.
“Well, there is nothing that the BA intends to do to enforce that, and there is the constitutional absurdity that one political station balances the other, which goes against the spirit of these guidelines.
“Of course the news should be fair, reporting as many angles as possible and giving both sides of a story, and of course politicians should have nothing to do with news production,” said Mr Schembri.
Asked whether he agreed with the provision that journalists working for the public service broadcaster or mainly associated to it should not express personal views about political and other controversial issues as this might jeopardise their objectivity, Mr Schembri said this was “a thorny issue which marks a great divide between American and European journalism, and not just about journalists in public broadcasting.
“Is a journalist entitled to make public his personal views? Freedom of expression would mean that s/he has that right, but in the US that would be seen as breaching her objectivity – another minefield – while in Europe it is considered more a question of honesty to declare one’s standpoint,” he said. Mr Schembri said the BA’s guidelines did not make any distinctions between news anchors, news editors, independent producers and freelance journalists working in public broadcasting.
“Nor do they go into whether, say, a journalist with PBS can write a column on an independent newspaper. In fact, yet again the BA declares that this specific guideline is not enforceable. I believe that any such regulations should be the remit of PBS, in full consultation with journalists and their representatives,” said Mr Schembri. He said journalists, not just in public broadcasting, should be above board in avoiding conflicts of interest – be they political, commercial, personal or otherwise. “Where such conflicts are unavoidable, particularly because of the small society we live in, they should be clearly declared,” he said.
The whole issue is enforcement
Malcolm J. Naudi, chairman of the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IGM), said the guidelines were a step in the direction of higher quality broadcasting. “There is clearly a need for this to be ‘imposed’ in the sense that broadcasting media in general have demonstrated that they are incapable of being self-regulated.”
Mr Naudi said even though some guidelines are quite specific, there was room for specific examples to be given in even more cases and the big question mark hanging over all this was enforcement.
Asked whether he agreed with the provision stipulating that journalists working for the public service broadcaster or mainly associated to it should not express personal views about political and other controversial issues as this might jeopardise their objectivity, Mr Naudi said that the public service broadcaster, as happens in many other countries – the BBC immediately comes to mind – has to make an even greater effort to be seen to be objective.
“In reality, Malta being what it is, I find it difficult for any individual journalist or presenter not to be ‘labelled’ politically or otherwise but ultimately it is up to the individual to demonstrate that he/she can act in a way that does not lack objectivity,” said Mr Naudi. The chairman of the IGM said he agreed with the provision that officials in a political party, campaigning organisation or lobby group should not be involved in news gathering, production and presentation of news and current affairs programmes. However, he said this does not happen now in Malta. “Our newsrooms are full of these individuals. Will this change overnight? No. What is expected is a massive culture change, including among the political leaders who own and run two of the stations,” said Mr Naudi, adding that it will affect recruitment of new staff and possible increase costs.
Mr Naudi said he also agreed with the provision that producers of news and current affairs programmes on the public service broadcaster should have no outside interests or commitments which could damage the public service broadcaster’s reputation for impartiality.
“This should apply to all areas of journalism, not just broadcasting. Again here the theory sounds highly desirable but do the salaries of these producers give them the facility/‘freedom’ to be able to turn down taking on other outside interests or commitments?” Mr Naudi asked.