The Broadcasting Authority has ruled against the public broadcaster, TVM, for failing to report in its news bulletin Labour backbencher Joe Debono Grech’s threats to independent MP Marlene Farrugia. The Broadcasting Authority said this was a “serious omission” and that the reason brought by TVM’s head of news, to justify the decision, is not acceptable. The head of news testified before the hearing that he wished to wait for the Speaker’s ruling on the matter. The Broadcasting Authority reminded him that the very nature of news is that it is reported as and when it happens.

It transpired from the proceedings that the public broadcaster – surprisingly – does not have a reporter in Parliament even when important debates occur. TVM’s parliamentary reporter sits at home and watches it all on Parliament TV, as do the rest of us. But the problem with that is you only get to see the face of the person who hits the mike-button to speak, because that gesture directs the camera. When that particular scene happened in Parliament, all we could see on our television screens was the face of Luciano Busuttil as he repeatedly hit the mike-button to speak. We heard the shouting in the background but didn’t know who was yelling, at whom, and what was being said. That information came from people who were in Parliament.

You would expect the public broadcaster’s newsroom to have its reporters on the scene within minutes, giving us live action reports from Parliament House. But of course not: TVM’s idea of the news is very strange indeed. The people who run the newsroom know that they do not exist in a vacuum and that if they fail to report events that are inconvenient, it doesn’t mean – as it did in the past – that we won’t find out about them at all. It is true that TVM’s 8pm news bulletin is high-impact and that it reaches people who don’t read newspapers or watch other stations, but there are many other sources of news nowadays and most of them are on the internet where they can be shared rapidly. The net result was that the entire country was talking about what Joe Debono Grech said to Marlene Farrugia while TVM’s news bulletin behaved as though it hadn’t happened at all. It made the station look, not to put too fine a point on it, quite ridiculous.

To make matters worse, TVM was represented at the Broadcasting Authority hearing by its retained lawyer, Mark Vassallo, who shares – shared, now that he is a Cabinet minister – a professional office and law practice with Chris Cardona. It was quite obvious in Parliament where Cardona stands on the matter of Marlene Farrugia and Joe Debono Grech: somewhere near Helena Dalli.

But back to the news and TVM’s returning mindset of news as something it decides to report rather than something which actually happens. That old mindset, which held Xandir Malta, and even TVM for a time, in such a tight stranglehold is no longer possible. It was never desirable, except to the government and other interested parties, but it was possible for a long while back then. It is even less desirable now, and beyond that, it is no longer possible.

The news is no longer what TVM decides to report in its evening bulletin. The news is what happens, whether TVM reports it or not. And when the news happens, and TVM does not report it, the station looks like it has failed, that it has missed out on the top story of the moment. It’s not good for a television newsroom’s reputation when it is beaten to the news by the internet sites. And that’s the kinder judgement; the unkinder assessment is that TVM has deliberately withheld the news for politically abusive reasons. And that, too, is very bad for the station’s credibility.

TVM has considerable human resources and equipment, making it the one media house which can get its people on the ground to bring us the news as it happens, complete with interviews and insight pieces to camera. But do they want to do that, or are they frozen in fear of their political masters? One would hope that it is, at the very least, fear rather than something much worse: the wish to protect them from censure.

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