From the Coalition of Environmental NGOs

We have been silent long enough on the state of Public Broadcasting in Malta, but feel we can be silent no longer.

On Wednesday 19 July, at a Business Breakfast seminar on the subject of Malta’s broadcasting services, criticism was voiced about the disproportionate importance given to politicians while civil society representatives are virtually ignored.

That evening, the Coalition of Environmental NGOs led by Ramblers, FAA, FoE, BICREF, Graffitti and many others, supported by AD, led a protest march in Valletta against the government’s so-called rationalisation plans. This protest march, called at short notice with hardly any advance publicity, was held on a hot summer weekday when many were still at work. To everyone’s amazement, the protest attracted an enormous gathering which official sources set at over 1,000.

Such a civil society rally, organised without the help of either of the two main parties’ publicity machines, had never been seen before on such a scale. The public anger at the proposals to extend the building zones was palpable. Every news service, even the smaller Internet ones, sent a journalist, yet our National Station “could not spare one”! Its lone cameraman did, nevertheless, succeed in filming the entire proceedings. Even though ample footage was available, PBS, our national public service channel, saw fit to grant the protest march less than a minute’s air time. By way of comparison, the installation of a single speed camera was recently accorded seven minutes of air time while this very significant national protest got 42 seconds. Curiously, TVM’s “coverage” of this event was dominated by an interview with a minister against a background of unidentifiable MEPA plans in which no reference to the protest was made.

The day after last Wednesday’s protest, a commentator on the PBS Radio Malta newspaper review slot commented: “It’s hard to say how well-attended the protest was,” when photos clearly showed several hundreds of people and the opening line of The Times report read: “An estimated 1,000 protestors attended yesterday’s national demonstration...”

This poor coverage by TVM was a pathetic repetition of the way our previous 9 June rally was handled by TVM. Jeremy Boissevain described this rally as “the most significant development in the Maltese socio-political arena for the last two decades.” On this occasion there was no PBS film crew present at all. To “remedy” this, PBS screened coverage from Net TV, which had already manipulated the footage to make this ground-breaking event look like a rally in favour of stray cats and dogs.

This first-hand experience of PBS attempts to play down matters that reflect poorly on our government makes one wonder what other issues might be treated in this way, in spite of the honest efforts of its many genuine journalists and, even though it is the duty of PBS to give unbiased news to its viewers. How many other events there might have been of which we know nothing, or whose message has been distorted beyond recognition? Sadly, one has to admit that one is left with no choice but to watch both political channels and then try to fit the pieces together to get a semblance of the truth.

This national disservice must all be seen in the light of a channel with a legal obligation to public service broadcasting. PBS/TVM is a national station paid with taxpayers’ money; its duty is to give the public an unbiased report of events and devote air time proportionate to the magnitude/ importance of the item. It is not there to act as our ministers’ personal publicity agency. As a supposedly independent news provider, it is expected to be immune to government pressure to influence the reporting broadcast on TVM.

Already the arrogance of certain ministers and the blatant opening up of countryside to developers is highly reminiscent of the bad old days of the seventies and early eighties. Now that the black box in our living room is once again airing propaganda instead of news, are we getting the feeling that we have been here before as a nation?

The Coalition of Environmental NGOs