The Labour Party is in discussion with the General Workers Union. So what’s new, you might ask? Well, it’s this: the Labour Party is going to the negotiating table in the role of an employer who wants to shed workers, and the General Workers Union doesn’t want those workers to be shed. Let’s skip this blessed irony, and fast forward to the reason why the political party wants to let some of its people go. The people in question – or rather their paycheques, which by all accounts are seen as somewhat inadequate – are to be shown the door in a cost-cutting measure aimed at inching Super One TV out of the blood-red waters of debt in which it is purportedly floating. Whether this will help, only the accountants know, but it is interesting to read what the union man said after the most recent bout of hard talk: “It is evident that unless urgent measures are taken to cut expenditure and to increase income, (Super One) cannot continue to guarantee jobs and to carry out the necessary investment in digital equipment, which it needs to do to remain competitive.”

The union man referred to Super One as a company. Of course, it is that – but there is a little bit of difference which cannot be ignored, and which should shape our perspective on the matter. Super One is owned by the Labour Party, which set it up so as to spread the Labour creed, or as some would have it, the word according to its leader. It was not set up as a commercial venture by a media company, in the business to make money. The exigencies are therefore somewhat different – or at least they were to start with. In those early, heady days, Super One TV and radio were the means to the end of bringing the Labour Party to power. Now, they have become an end in themselves, consuming uncontainable and uncontrollable amounts of money, and diverting the political party’s attention and energy from the true goal of getting elected. The union man’s declaration, that Super One has to invest in digital equipment if it is to remain competitive, is indicative of how very far removed from their original objective the political broadcast media are now.

Here is Super One, speaking about the need for more capital investment to remain competitive – as though it is there to compete in the media market, rather than to help persuade us all to vote Labour. There is NET TV, jumping through similar hoops and performing equally manic distortions along with Radio 101, to compete in a commercial market when it is there only – and I mean only – to push the Nationalist Party’s message. The tragedy is that, with concern about the financial bottom-line eating up so much time and attention, there seems to be little left over to devote to actually coming up with a message to push.

Neither party can afford to run its media, and even if either could, the money would be much better spent elsewhere: on developing policy, on attracting new and better people to the political ranks, on changing to adapt to the 21st century and membership of the European Union. It’s a rapidly changing Malta out here, but neither of the political parties appears to have noticed. Both parties appear to be regarding their broadcast media as not just a tremendous financial burden, but also a psychological one. If our political culture were properly mature, there would be no need for all this; politics and politicians do not belong on television, except in circumstances where journalists call them in for their (brief) opinions, and then only when there is a matter of particular public interest. This is certainly not a ministerial site visit to a road that has been in the making for the best part of two years. If our state television station were functioning as it should, the only news value in that would be the question of why exactly it takes so long to rebuild a road in Malta. If television journalists asked that kind of question, it might shake our people out of the apathy in which we fully expect main arterial roads to be closed for up to three years once work begins on them.

Yet we are still in a state of political adolescence, and look what is happening to us as a consequence of our misguided belief, back in the early 1990s, that it would be a good idea for the political parties to dominate the broadcast media by running their own radio and television stations. It would have gone disastrously wrong even in a highly developed democratic society, which would never countenance such a thing in the first place.

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Both political parties are crippled and shackled by their television and radio stations, yet neither wishes to shed them unless the other does so to. It is a perfect metaphor, in miniature, for the nuclear disarmament pressures of the Cold War. The Soviet Union and the USA diverted vast, unquantifiable resources towards the build-up of arms for potential use against each other. Each was aware of the sheer waste and of the inherent danger to mankind; neither wished to disarm unilaterally. From time to time, there would be ‘I will if you will’ feelers, but they always collapsed in a deluge of suspicion, mistrust and hostility.

The metaphor stops short at a certain point, though. Bilateral disarmament could never have been possible because there would have had to be too much reliance on trust. The Soviet Union (or the USA for that matter) would have been able to commit to disarmament while still maintaining secret stashes of frightening weapons. This is a little bit different. It would be difficult for one of our political parties to keep a covert television station up its little sleeve, and to then renege on an agreement for bilateral disarmament, surprising us with a sudden dawn blast of Glenn Bedingfield or Francis Zammit Dimech shaking hands with a plethora of dignitaries, sending us running for the shelters.

It’s their choice, however. If they wish to carry on having their backs broken by television and radio debt, instead of building up and renewing their actual political parties, it’s up to them. And in that case, I have one thing to say: no wonder they find it so hard to get to grips with anything in this sixpence-sized country.