Gino Cauchi: Super One ethics? No, we just wanted to suck up to our critics

Labour MP and former PBS/Super One newsman, Gino Cauchi

The Times, today:

Asked whether Labour regretted appointing Mr (Peppi) Azzopardi to help draw up ethics guidelines for its journalists, Mr (Gino) Cauchi said it did not because the whole initiative was intended to include those journalists who were usually highly critical of the party, like Mr Azzopardi.

I’ve reached the stage where every time I hear or read a piece of Labour Party communications, I want to howl in despair. It was bloody obvious at the time that Labour only roped in certain people to help draw up its ethics guidelines for Super One so as to make them feel included and involved, and to soften them up a little.

That’s why Labour’s big cheeses didn’t even bother ringing this particular journalist who is “usually highly critical of the party”. I would rather be pegged out and eaten alive by driver-ants than waste even five minutes of my time coaching Super One propagandists or trying to explain ethics to them.

This is not because they work for Labour’s propaganda machine (though that too, because the demands of extreme propaganda have nothing to do with journalism) but because I would have seen the exercise for what it was: including me to flatter me and make me feel less antagonist to that bunch of clowns.

I wouldn’t have responded to the telephone call with a suggestion as to what they should do with their cordless instrument. I’m too much of a nice, well brought up girl for that. But I would have said the equivalent of I’m afraid I can’t because I have a subsequent engagement.

But here’s the thing. Did Gino Cauchi have to be so thick and idiotic and put it on record, in a national newspaper, that Labour didn’t really want ethics guidelines. It just wanted to include its perceived enemies and bring them closer?

The most amusing bit here is that Joe Azzopardi is NOT highly critical of the Labour Party. If anything, he’s always struck me as somebody who keeps his options open. And that’s why I suspect that the real root cause of all this aggression towards him is, as PBS said yesterday, audience figures.

His show gets the viewers and it gets a big chunk of the ever-shrinking advertising pie.

Let’s put it this way. If Joe Azzopardi wakes up one morning and decides to take his show to Super One, they’re not going to slam the door in his face. They’ll take the show and shove their Friday night John Bundy off the nearest cliff.

Perhaps somebody should ask that Jason Micallef – he’s Super One chairman, apparently – a straight question about this. Does he want Xarabank? Would he like to have it?

If he says not, then we can conclude that his business brain is about as good as his ability to assess electoral figures.