Time for a reform of broadcasting

On Wednesday the Today Public Policy Institute issued a report into the state of broadcasting in Malta, with a view (in its own words) to ‘confronting the challenge’ of regulating the sector.

Attesting to the difficulty of this challenge is the fact that the TPPI report constitutes but one of many attempts over the years: including a call for reform by former President George Abela in 2011.

Abela recommended a “revision” of the Broadcasting Act, 20 years after it was last revised and 50 years after the Broadcasting Authority was set up. “The reform should be in line with today’s reality and fast technological advances in the area,” he said.

This proposal would sadly prove short-lived, in part because it was overshadowed by the political controversies that would arise soon afterwards. Nonetheless the President was right to bring up the issue, and right also in discerning where part of this challenge now lies. The technological advances in this field have radically transformed the process of information exchange, and with it the way that news is both gathered and transmitted to audiences.

The Broadcasting Authority of 1961 is therefore an anachronism in today’s world. Although it was envisaged to cope with another technological revolution which had similarly altered the entire media landscape in its day– i.e.,  the advent of television in the late 1950s – it now finds itself out of date, and unable to fulfil its primary remit, to ensure fairness and balance in broadcasting, in its new context.

The emergence of online sources of news has created possibilities and challenges for broadcasting which clearly lie outside the scope and remit of the BA. This does not mean that no regulator exists at all for the growing (and constantly changing) digital landscape. Some aspects of digital broadcasting fall under the Malta Communications Authority, which is empowered to handle complaints concerning ‘misuse’ of digital technology.

But the two remits are not interchangeable. The Communications Authority exists primarily to regulate the sector from a competition and trade perspective: to create (in its own words) a platform for “sustainable competition, customer choice and value for money” and “an environment that is conducive to investment, innovation and continued social and economic growth.”

The MCA does not purport to regulate the output of the digital sector in the same way as its older broadcasting cousin. There is a clear imbalance of power in the regulatory bodies governing broadly the same area.

Even with the confines of its own remit, the Broadcasting Authority applies different weights and measures to different models of media ownership. This anomaly arises more out of interpretation of the law, than from the law itself: but in a pivotal ruling the Broadcasting Authority established that its guidelines and regulations concerning balance and impartiality are applicable only to the national broadcaster, PBS… on the ground that the two politically-owned stations ‘balance each other out’.

Effectively this creates discrimination within discrimination for the State broadcaster, as evidenced by the plethora of complaints filed continuously by both parties against PBS for ‘unfair’ or ‘biased’ coverage. But the situation is made more anomalous by the fact that the same two parties also get to appoint representatives to the Broadcasting Authority board: effectively regulating the very sector in which they themselves are leading players.

In any other sphere it would be absurd (and legally questionable) for private operators to regulate a sector in which they face competition from others. But when it comes to broadcasting, we seem to have collectively accepted this absurd state of affairs.

Clearly then, any attempt to rationalise this situation would have to address these two pivotal issues: the market distortion created by the two parties’ unhealthy stranglehold on broadcasting regulation; and a broadening of the regulator’s remit to take on board the emerging realities of digital broadcasting.

The TPPI report goes some way to addressing both concerns, by proposing a merger between the Broadcasting and Communications authorities to form a new ‘Malta Media Authority’. More significantly, it proposes widening the pool of representation on the new authority’s board to also include “other private media operators, telecommunications operators, the public broadcaster, the government, journalists, experts in media technology and media content.”

The idea is innovative and certainly well intentioned: though one might question whether the inclusion of more operators in the regulatory body is indeed the best way to counter the presence of only two. On the surface this may well erode the unfair advantage of the two parties themselves: but the main bone of contention – i.e., a conflict of roles between operators and regulator – would nonetheless remain.

Still, the report provides a workable alternative which can always be fine-tuned at a later stage. What remains missing from this debate – unsurprisingly, given that both parties would be adversely affected by this reform – is the political commitment to make this change happen.

It would be unwise to procrastinate any further.