Dr CARMEN SAMMUT has just published Media and Maltese Society which offers a comprehensive analysis of the media landscape in Malta. A former public broadcasting journalist, she embarked on years of research to investigate and reflect on the state of Maltese journalism and other media processes. She talks to Marie Benoît about the partisan media, polarisation and the Fourth Estate.
In your book you conclude that “As opposed to the decline of the partisan press throughout Europe, partisan journalism in Malta developed a new plumage and stronger wings.” This is not a good thing I know…but could you please comment.
When broadcast pluralism was enacted in 1991, the main political parties wielded their influence on the State to structure the media market as it suited them. Then licences to private companies were only granted after the main political parties and also the Church had established their media. So we can say that after pluralism, the media remained key sites of political struggles among the two blocs. While broadcasting stations may have nibbled at the influence of the advocacy press, the interests of the main institutions remained safely protected.
Yet, one of the main arguments in my book is that the existence of advocacy set-ups is not necessarily a bad thing as we should not idealise the commercial model. My key criticism is towards the operational practices of the partisan media. Half truths, spin, scare-mongering, misinterpretation, omissions and continuous sabre-rattling are stifling informed debates. As a result, while the partisan media can be instruments of political participation and mobilisation, they often poison our communication system to the extent that they may be alienating members of the moderate majority from political processes. In a democracy, this is not a healthy thing.
“Malta became the only European democracy allowing political parties to privately own radio and television stations that serve to amplify polarisation.” Do European laws exist to make us have to change this? Will they be introduced in the future?
It would be a shame if we had to shift the responsibility of decisions that impact on our media to the European Union. It should be up to us to engage in a reflexive assessment. My book is a genuine effort to provoke a discussion and is an invitation for such reflection.
In 2005 Lilly Gruber, a prominent Italian journalist-turned-MEP, questioned Malta’s “anomalous” pluralism in broadcasting before the European Commission. Although the Commission could not take direct action, Gruber asked the EU’s executive body to rectify broadcasting practices in Malta so that “other political parties, minorities and civil society are given the opportunity to voice their opinions on all television media”.
The critical tone adopted in parts of my book support some of these concerns. At face value, the Maltese media in general and television in particular, seem to present a restricted range of viewpoints. Partisan media blatantly promote party-centric agendas, whereas the other media tend to emphasise “balance” between the two sides and so they indirectly promote a monochromatic world picture that fosters bipolarism. However, we have to acknowledge that as Maltese society undergoes transformations, the media are making greater effort to give more space to civil society and to resort to free-thinking individuals as sources.
‘Both partisan and non-partisan journalists are embroiled in political and economic struggles.” Do you think that because of the small size of the island and because for every bone there are 100 dogs this is ever going to change since political patronage is so important here?
While Malta has idiosyncrasies that result from small islandness, in any society you cannot really divorce the media from political and economic systems.
“Maltese journalists are experiencing a collision between two traditions: the strong partisan tradition and the influx of discourses and aspirations adopted from the professional paradigm.” Could you explain what you mean by this please?
Both non-partisan and partisan journalists are paying more and more lip service to professional rhetoric as they have higher aspirations to influence the national agenda. While all journalists acknowledge that institutions enjoy superior promotional resources and better news management, there is now a new breed of non-party journalists who are openly challenging institutional agendas. I think the University is a significant incubator of professional ambitions. In the late 1980s, professional aspirations also led to the setting up of The Malta Press Club that established codes of practice, organised in-service courses and rewarded journalistic performance. The Journalists’ Committee was also formed recently to promote greater collegiality. We now need more coordinated reflection that leads to action as journalists in all media structures do have some power to prompt change.
Chapter 4 deals with ‘Journalists and their audiences’. Could you please give me a general comment on this chapter?
One of the good qualities of most Maltese journalists is that, as yet, they tend to address their readers/audiences as citizens not as consumers. Profit-driven media organisations make money by selling their audience/readership to advertisers and so the higher your audience rating the higher your advertisement revenue. Nevertheless in Malta, most of the journalists I interviewed did not feel constrained by polls. Two elements determine which news is selected: in some cases it is news value criteria; in others news depends on institutional interests.
One of the questions I set out to explore in this book is how audiences make sense from the cacophony of fragmented and contradictory information that reaches them. Television was a key source of information for the people I interviewed and I concluded that with exceptions, people were being informed from a set menu that is laid down by dominant parties. Audiences filter contradictory information critically but coherently through their partisan lenses, personal experiences and other frames of reference. The English-language newspapers, PBS and the church media were often used as frames of reference that inform their analyses. It is important to note that while my interviewees were highly critical of polarisation, most of them deemed polarities to be natural and matter-of-fact. Moreover, at the point when I was conducting research, the audiences’ criticism of the media and of the political culture was evidence of people’s engagement in public debate rather than a sign of political scepticism.
Your book concludes that “Malta has preserved traits which British and American journalism lost with the growth of media capitalism…” Can you say more about these conclusions?
Some media scholars describe professional journalism as an “American invention” that was created when the commercial press freed news from institutional and state censorship. Hence, news was undressed of political bias to appeal to wider audiences and advertisers. This in turn led the press to upgrade to a “Fourth Estate”. In some history books 18th century American and British politicised newspapers were often described as the Dark Age of journalism, whereas the advent of commercialism is portrayed as the start of a Golden Age. However critics now challenge this romanticised story, as the Fourth Estate was often instrumental for commercial proprietors to exert pressure on political parties, and consequently on governments. Moreover, whereas journalists liberally scrutinise governments, they are less likely to assail the interests of private corporations and businesses.
On the whole, Malta has not fully followed European patterns, where the media have been tagging along the American trajectory. European trends, which led to rapid commercialisation and liberalisation, are causing persistent concerns about the diminishing European public sphere, with serious consequences on participative democracy. Commercialisation does not necessarily lead to democratisation.