I am duty and ethically bound to steer clear of the current situation concerning the scheduling or rescheduling of television programmes on the public stations, something from which I hope I can be exempted by my readers. But, of course, I have no qualms about discussing this tabloid rush to win television exposure and although it is not a Maltese phenomenon, the narrowness of our digital and political psyches make it look and sound a lot more dramatic here than it really is or should be.

Newspapers everywhere in the world are facing an uncertain future. In the United States alone it has been estimated that about a hundred local and regional papers fold for good every day. Those which have survived or are seeking survival have been wise enough to invest, given they had the financial and banking power to do so, in the digital world, fully exploiting the incredible process of media convergence that has made news and comment readily available on TV, visual radio, the Internet, and the social media via iPads, smartphones and wristwatches.

However imperative, these forays into the electronic world have still not all been successful. Some have even learned a bitter truth: readership muscle is not easily converted into digital muscle, but those who succeed will know they have more or less paved the way for a sustainable future. Journalism, representing all commercial/political colours and hues, is today being served extremely well, but not necessarily by the same level of quality and professional commitment.

As with everything else, the local scene has been comparatively slow in making a proper and efficient switch to the new realities resulting from global upheavals in the gathering and delivery of news, but not for a lack of wanting to meet the challenge.

Given the recognised and consistent superiority of the national broadcaster as displayed in independent ratings for credibility, following and popularity, it is obvious that the tabloid people should be seeking television exposure there. However, the Maltese television range of selection has grown so much in the past decade that a lot more opportunities can be and are available elsewhere.

I distinctly remember the battle cry when pluralism in broadcasting was introduced, way back in the early 1990s. It was “competition”. At the time I was still at PBS, working full-time in broadcast management and, while we secretly dreaded the new scenario that was to “rob” us of our sole ownership of the airwaves, the only alternative was to embark on a new overhaul of the radio set-up (remember, the pluralism tsunami was to first reach the radio sector) and a complete revamping of our programme schedules. And yet, we still started losing – at an uncomfortable rate – some of our best presenters and DJs to the new stations. Novelty, even if it’s old hat wrapped in new glittery paper, will always be a major attraction in itself.

In time, however, an opposite trend appeared. Some of the ‘old faithful’ silently returned to the fold, not always with their tails between their legs, but almost.

Practically the same juxtaposition occurred in later years with the introduction of new television channels and the digital spread. For all the insistence about competition and what have you, people in the sector soon trudged the route back to Gwardamanġa. And it all seems to have stuck there, regardless of every true broadcaster’s insatiable need to change, to update and to provide a programme schedule that can be as elastic and as efficient as the ever-changing market demands.

Fair enough, decisions can be contested and tabloid ambitions in a changing world of communications also need to be entertained somewhere, but all of this has to be seen in the nationally established context of competition, precisely in the sense provided by two of the most punchy expressions in the Maltese language: Imut Papa, jitwieled ieħor and Bieb jingħalaq, ieħor jinfetaħ, both meaning ‘there is always an alternative’.

Phew, I really don’t know whether I’ve strayed a bit off line or not, but it is important to talk about realities and truths rather than just speculation and spin.

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Cosmopolitan blues

Towers or no towers, Malta has become cosmopolitan and the Maltese, in their majority, have – albeit reluctantly – grown accustomed to it. Our bilingualism no doubt helps. The huge influx of foreigners seeking work and opportunities here is a sure sign of prosperity and all the statistics, independent or partial, show it. The economy is doing well, hopefully to both meet this on-going challenge and to address – in even stronger terms – such local issues as poverty and social housing.

Of course there is a price to be paid. Foreigners today constitute an impressive chunk of our prison population. Not a single day passes without our law court reporters telling us about people of different nationalities being arraigned and condemned on various charges, from violent and indecent attacks and theft to drug trafficking and fraud. On one given day last week, for example, an Eritrean was sentenced to eleven months in jail for drug trafficking – cannabis – in an area frequented by young people, and a Somali man left Malta for Sicily on the ferry with 36 kilos of khat, the African equivalent. God knows how many such consignments currently cross the Sicily Channel from the opposite direction.

‘Foreigner’ crime among us, I hasten to add, is not restricted to Africans. The local news stage has been replete with Slavs, Bulgarians, Romanians, Brits, Italians, French, Spaniards and Scandinavians who have committed crimes – some of them even having the temerity to mock the police when arrested.

These cosmopolitan blues, however, need to be viewed against the positive input to the national economy by large numbers of bona fide foreigners, many of whom are also integrating and marrying into Maltese families, thus providing a much-needed fillip to our DNA. This DNA, incidentally, has always had its cosmopolitan nature as both our national language and our surnames amply confirm.

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Beady Lampuki?

While the justified furore over the recent case of sea pollution, officially confirmed to have been caused by the fish-farming industry, has rightly been promptly tackled by the authorities, there are other problems surfacing in the world’s oceans, let alone the comparatively small and closed Mediterranean Sea.

In the UK, a parliamentary committee’s report has insisted that cosmetic companies should be banned from using plastic microbeads in their products to protect marine wildlife and the human food chain. The report reveals that 680 tons of tiny plastic balls are used in the UK alone each year, with a single shower washing 100,000 microbeads down the plughole.

While our lampuki and other fish catches seem to be getting smaller every season, one would do well to see how many of these microbeads, no doubt flushed out of Italian, French and Spanish showers in particular, are finding their way into Mediterranean fish species.