News • 23 March 2003

Heroes and villains in Malta’s media arena

By Matthew Vella

When is a good story a winner for the elections? No need to guess. The months of unfettered propaganda and debate leading up to the referendum have sent political party newsrooms into full overdrive, competing fiercely for the media advertising share, and cutting on editorial costs as well.

And that is why so much of the Maltese media has been successfully hijacked by the political parties, stamping all outlets – newspapers, TV, radio and internet - with their indelible scar. Election time is the crowning moment of all party investments. Though crippled by financial burden, and by their very political nature automatically snubbed by a percentage of the population, it is the fund-raising bonanzas that pile in the cash.

The straitjacket media world in Malta is characterised by a Broadcasting Authority that is arm-twisted by the parties, and hundreds of production crews hunting for their advertising share. A small population means little circulation for each individual newspaper, and less exposure to the national audience for the cable TV networks.

It is gladdening to see that TVM, despite being creatively barren and a whore to the state, enjoys an average of 38.1 per cent of the audience share all throughout the day.

Running behind are Labour’s Super One and the PN’s NET (19.6% and 10.6% respectively). Their supremacy is confronted by the loss that was Max Plus, which languished into the valley of private initiative death, witness to the commercial burden of operating quality private and independent stations.

Smash TV on the other, plies a free-for-all editorial. If it makes money, then it’s good for TV, ergo Eurosceptic editorial meshed in with American right-wing Christian TV and local Catholic productions. It is clear however that owner Joe Baldacchino is a commercial pundit that pushes no party agenda but works by the whim of his pocket. Son Jesmar Baldacchino is one of Smash’s mainstay’s, today an MLP election candidate and ma former member of the Eurosceptic Campaign for National Independence.

The healthier mix in radio has not escaped political and cleric dominance. Top place to Super One radio with a 25.2 per cent of the audience share, with the Curia’s RTK running up. Next in line are leisure moguls Ian and Kevin Decesare’s Bay Radio, the state’s Radju Malta and the PN’s Radio 101.

A political empire

It is clear that it is the political stations that dominate public opinion. The manufacture of consent in Malta is criminal.

With no non-governmental and independent TV watchdog (save for the Broadcasting Authority, which remains arm-twisted by the PN and the MLP), there is ample room for the integration of politics and family entertainment into every single slot of televisual entertainment.

It is unbelievable to see that it is Labour, the overall winner in politico-entertainment, that lambastes the private, independent newspapers and TV companies for having opinions. Sant is no friend to the English-language press, which he quickly quips at as ‘gatekeepers.’

In such a politically-dominated media world, the extent to which politicians accuse private and independent journalists of not being ‘objective’ without a single attempt at coyness, is unbelievable.

Whilst the political sitting duck, TVM, remains non-committal and intrinsically pro-government, pandering to the state’s soporific agenda, its news programmes are burdened by the political labels of their producers.

It is Where’s Everybody? that has been severely threatened by the prospects of a new Labour government. Despite independent reporting and commanding the largest audiences, pro-EU sympathies and Nationalist histories have tarnished WE?’s image in the eyes of Labour, that continues to boycott the production companies programmes.

In the other fiefdoms of the political kingdom, Alternattiva Demokratika’s Capital Radio runs a minimum political agenda, having weekly discussion programmes and running electoral marathons for the party. Being run by a co-operative, the station has ceded any overarching political agenda to an eighties pop editorial.

In last November’s ratings, the station was just trailing behind the top five radio stations. But The Green Party’s hold on the public agenda of news and political discussion remains minimal, especially since it no longer possesses a newspaper.