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Journalists' institute wants media owners on council
Institute of Maltese Journalists wants to have media owners represented on its council.
19 January 2014, 12:00am
Jerome Caruana Cilia
Jerome Caruana Cilia
1 min read
Illum spoke to the Institute of Maltese Journalists (IĠM) President, Malcolm J. Naudi regarding a proposal put forward by the Institute to give media owners full representation in the IĠM council.
Naudi explained that the decision was made in last year's annual general meeting.
"Basically, representatives from the Institute spoke to the seven main media owners in Malta. These are MediaToday, PBS, ONE, Media.Link, Allied Newspapers, the Independent and Union Press. IĠM invited each media owner to send a journalist on behalf of the company. Everyone agreed to nominate a journalist," Naudi said.
He asserted that these representatives would have the same voting rights and other privileges as the current seven council members.
MediaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan doesn't agree with this proposal.
"I was informed around two weeks ago, and I disagree that media owners per se have to be represented on the IĠM council. I also disagree that the IĠM is run by individuals who are not journalists. Moreover, we have a mixture of media owners. There are those who are managers, political party secretary-generals, directors and there are also media owners, like me, that are journalists."
On the contrary, PN secretary-general Chris Said is in favour of this suggestion. However, Said said that he was not consulted on this matter.
Union Press director, Alfred Farrugia and ONE Productions Ltd. Chief Executive Officer, Jason Micallef also argued that no one from the IĠM approached them to discuss the proposal.
Read more in today's edition of Illum.
Rita Pizzuto •
This is sheer stupidity on the part of the IGM, the same stupidity as having it run by an executive with members who are no longer journalists, not retired but ex journalists who work for companies that have nothing to do with journalists or newspapers. I agree completely with Saviour whom I would nominate as Journalist of the year for his exclusives throughout the year 2013. I also disagree with media owners on the executive. They are not journalists but business people. Some of them don' t even know the meaning or workings of journalists. Besides, it does not look good on the IGM to say they were in touch with the owners when it seems that this is not true.
