A recent Department of Information (DOI) directive regarding the required dress code at press briefings, which some journalists took exception too, is a commendable step in re-establishing the “ownership” of things public and the respect due to them as well as our country’s chief executive. Proper dress in work surroundings should be the order of the day not because we need to keep to the British tradition of attire but because our dress comportment shows respect to our colleagues and clients.

This brings to mind that not for the first time I have written to TVM (and other stations) at the low cut dresses of some of the people they put on screen for various programmes. The reply is, in not so many words, that to keep up to date on fashions this is current. Yet their news bulletins, to mention one facet, are not always current and at times rather scant. They certainly do not keep up with the information explosion and the wealth of news available on more modern media such as the internet, which at the push of a button at any time of day and night, give the latest and not at set predetermined times with hardly ever any “breaking news” innovation.

Take the latest heist at Arkadia, Gozo. Shop and street gossip on this island was far more detailed than the starched up last English news bulletin on the date (9 September).

While on the TVM bulletin the newsman said that the stolen amount was not yet known, at one or two grocers I usually shop, the presumed amount was mentioned as well as the time of the crime, and the fact that the robbers were masked, the takings were substantial as they involved the arcade’s shops taking over the long weekend, the time police barriers were still around the place awaiting the conclusion of whatever clue gathering was taking place and so on. Any private sleuth would have his/her work cut out for him. Naturally English language viewers on TVM were sold short on this and other occasions. Short on hemlines, short on facts.

Joseph G. Bonett

Ghajnsielem