A certain playwright once wrote something which roughly said that a rose would still smell like a rose even if it was called a cabbage.

TVM and all state broadcasting spout propaganda of the worst kind. Call it journalism if you want but it still stinks of offal and propping up of a regime.

That no one has done anything is pitiful. If this were a different country or age, doing something drastic like going to Television House or whatever the state broadcasting is called and setting it on fire would seem the only way out. Then all those who run the media house would be hauled in front of a crowd to have cabbages and eggs hurled at them.

Subsequently the crowd would be given pitchforks to force the propaganda machine operators to move to some place far from habitation. Justice would be meted out.

In Malta nothing will happen about this sad state of affairs. Because it seems the country is made up of cabbages and people whose brain is totally vegetative.

Malta needs TVM because it seems we have it in our DNA to want to be told lies and rubbish which we – or the huge majority of us – applaud.

TVM is not paid by Labour Party sponsors. It is not kept going by advertising revenue. It is not kept afloat by the money poured into Labour party coffers. It is paid for by the people’s taxes and these deserve better treatment.

TVM should be the paragon of broadcasting. That the PN, in nearly a quarter century of government, did not reform the broadcasting situation is a horrid indictment. That the Labour Party extended the state broadcaster to become a satellite of their own media house is a sad page in our history.

The two political parties are to blame for this mess. The last thing they should ever be allowed to do is come up with a long-term solution. All they have done and will do is perpetuate the strength of their hold on power. The ones in power have to take the first step. Even if it is a temporary one to rid us of propaganda immediately.

Government, by controlling state broadcasting and keeping it as its own poodle, ensures that the people in their huge majority remain uninformed or informed of the truth according to the party in power.

The Labour Party, in their revolting way of turning news into propaganda, go beyond the horrid. You would imagine that, two years after her assassination when she has still managed to rock the whole edifice that once seemed impregnable, TVM would have the decency to call her by her proper name: Daphne Caruana Galizia not just DCG.

Seeing the TVM graphics with DCG written on the screen is horrendous.

This is beyond a horror story. Daphne Caruana Galizia was assassinated. They had brutalised her before she was executed. The Castille band of crooks planned the murder at the heart of government and yet the national broadcaster still perpetrates their brand of hatred.

That a woman was murdered and how she was murdered is bad enough. To try disfiguring her, even while she is confirming that she was and is right, is utterly disgraceful.

The ones who used to call Daphne Caruana Galizia DCG before she was assassinated were legion. They were all in cahoots with the oafs who ran the propaganda machine orchestrated from Castille.

They controlled TVM and all the national media. They called her DCG and a witch, bitch, Bidnija bile queen, and anything which was unsavoury. Some of the culprits were Glenn Beddingfield, Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Saviour Balzan, One (SuperOne), Orizzont, Toni Zarb and other various assorted Labour spokespersons.

These were despicable actions then and remain despicable now. The more TVM tries to fight the name Daphne Caruana Galizia, the worse the divide, the hatred.

To the hotheads and the ones with a brain which competes for grey matter with a caterpillar, the dehumanisation of Daphne Caruana Galizia makes total sense. The Labour hardcore love the narrative that Daphne was, and has remained, a lying fraud and a demon.

If Robert Abela and whoever rules the Labour Party keep on egging, or accepting, this state of affairs at the national broadcaster they will soon find out that, like Joseph Muscat before him, Daphne Caruana Galizia will triumph over the new regime.

Robert Abela has to get his act together and change TVM and the rest of the state media house. Or, like Joseph Muscat, he will find he has a house of crumbling cards.