GUEST POST: the death or taming of current affairs discussion on television has killed discussion in public

Sent in by Matthew S:

Anyone who reads the newspapers on a regular basis will have noticed a common thread going through them: the lack of discussion about the truly important topics and what is going on in Malta.

It is as though the entire country has had its agenda set for it and is single-mindedly focused on the leader of the Opposition, who is not the one in charge.

Meanwhile, government activity goes largely unmonitored and is barely talked about at all, in the media as well as in general conversation.

I blame one thing: the removal, taming or dumbing-down of all current affairs programmes on prime-time television.

Some weeks ago, this website quoted the latest statistics about Maltese television and claimed that television in Malta has become irrelevant. That is only partially true. What has actually happened is that Maltese television has deliberately been made irrelevant.

International studies have shown that people today still watch as much television as they used to and the living room with a television set is still central to most households.

The difference now is that people tend to switch between screens. They go back and forth between their smartphone, tablet computer and television, often simultaneously, depending on which one holds their attention the most. But television is as powerful as ever.

Alternatives like YouTube attract many viewers, but they don’t carry the clout and they don’t have the budgets that television stations usually have. Nor do they have the credibility. The medium, as we have known for years, is the message.

I have no doubt that in Malta the situation is the same. Practically everyone watches TV after dinner. We’re hardly a nation of athletes, book readers or theatre patrons, after all. Even when people are talking and eating, the television is generally on in the background.

Newspapers and websites are all very well, but the topics they choose to highlight differ widely, their market is fragmented and they are easy for politicians and policy-makers to avoid.

Journalists are often told to send their questions in writing by email, and when it’s not possible to do this, they’re suborned by free cookies from Kurt.

Television, on the other hand, makes people focus, and a good current affairs analysis programme gives them something to talk about around the office water-cooler the next morning.

For the person being interviewed, television is a real test of his or her performance under pressure, ideas, policies, proposals or whatever is being discussed. Live TV is inescapable.

The subject feels the hot lights of the studio, hears the pestering questions of the interviewer and senses the gaze of the thousands of people watching. There isn’t much room for manoeuvre. Answers must be provided and the public reaction is instant and wide-reaching. Verbal and visual tics are noted and registered.

Joseph Muscat is on record saying that he doesn’t like surprising questions (that’s what he told Norman Vella) and for anyone who cared to look, this was evident long before the Norman Vella conversation came out.

Never had a Maltese election campaign been so scripted as the 2013 general election. Everywhere he went, the teleprompter and lectern went with him. When Joseph Muscat had a Google chat, it went against all the norms of internet chatting. People and questions were chosen beforehand. When ‘spontaneous’ rallies, events or celebrations are held, lighting and sound suppliers are always on hand to make everything look suspiciously professional and pre-planned. Even the ‘spontaneous’ questions from the audience are scripted and planned beforehand.

This is a government which likes to work according to a script. Current affairs programmes can’t be banned because this is not China, so Muscat’s government has done the next best thing and rendered TV irrelevant – censorship by stealth, if you will.

Lou Bondi has been put out to pasture with a retainer for keeping his mouth shut even on his Facebook page, though his official role is that of organiser of the emperor’s circuses for the quelling of proletarian discontent, as described by Juvenal two thousand years ago in Rome. Muscat himself provides the bread in the form of random cheques, state hand-outs, jobs for cronies and two cents off the price of petrol.

Joe Azzopardi (who appears to be rapidly losing his mental faculties anyway, going by what I observe of his performance on television) has shifted his focus even further into Jerry Springer territory. Reno Bugeja’s piercing questions would now fail to pierce a plastic bag, and the rest were moved to a time when few people are watching and many have not even returned home from work yet.

The government has performed a neat trick: a disappearing act. Nobody ever sees the ministers or the people pulling the strings unless it’s by chance on a busy road while they are being escorted by the police, at a concert in the VIP area looking very important or shopping at a Lidl supermarket.

When the Labour Party/government cannot get out of sending people to speak on shows like Xarabank, it dispatches political nobodies like Cyrus Engerer or backbenchers like Deborah Schembri to face the Opposition’s shadow ministers.

Here’s my first question to a hypothetical minister sitting under studio spotlights:

“In January, the government was extolling the virtues of children being raised in a mixed gender environment. We were told that single-gender schools are so last century. A few months down the line and the same government is telling us that it is perfectly all right for children to be raised in a single-sex environment at home. Why the discrepancy?”

The government might very well have a perfectly good answer to the question but if it does, then I want to hear it. And gay adoptions is only one issue in a very long list. The power station project, the selling of passports, spring hunting, the rise in unemployment, the list is endless.

How exactly did we go from everyone from Norman Lowell to Ġorġ tad-Donuts having their say as if they have perfectly normal views to no one even bothering that the deputy prime minister (Louis Grech, lest you have forgotten) is completely invisible and that even the finance minister (to jog your memory – Edward Sciclna) is not there on television, being accountable to the public on truly serious matters?

The Home Affairs Minister (we know who he is) is frequently in the news – but it’s always because of some mess he has made or some awkwardness, and not because he is answering questions from journalists. When challenged in parliament, he tends to be rude, dismissive and scathing. The press doesn’t even bother to challenge him anymore.

The sad thing is that many consider the current state of affairs as progress. It is often said that Malta is too politicised. This is rubbish. All decisions, even ones which are based on sound scientific arguments, are political in nature.

The word ‘politics’ comes from Greek meaning ‘related to citizens’ or ‘related to cities’. This means that even the most trivial and seemingly non-partisan decision, say the construction of a water fountain in the middle of a park, is in fact political.

The idea that ‘other countries are less politicised than Malta’ comes from Italy, because to many Maltese, ‘other countries’ means Italy. But Italy is a terrible example to follow when it comes to democracy. Italians only seem unconcerned with politics because they have a long history of what is effectively a state within a state system (from mafiosi to the local corrupt politician who needs his palms greased to get stuff done).

That’s still politics, but not the kind you can go and talk about in public. And it is most certainly not democracy but its antithesis. Italian indifference and contempt are born from disenfranchisement and powerlessness in the face of massive corruption and organized crime. They are not the ideal but the opposite of that.

In a healthy, democratic country, everyone from the religious fanatic to the humble office worker to the decision-maker should find a space to express his or her views in public. The rest should be free to ridicule, ignore, agree, disagree or praise as they see fit.

When views are suppressed, it is hard to say what is really going on. If anything, Malta needs more political discussion and not less.

The Opposition needs to find a way to fill that Bondi+-sized hole. The lack of public discussion is working in the government’s favour. It allows Joseph Muscat to carry on with that steamrolling which Simon Busuttil has been talking about so much recently.

I believe that, had more time been given to public discussion, the public would have understood the Opposition’s stand on gay adoption much more. Maybe the Opposition could have even been persuaded to vote differently in parliament.

With such a feeble attempt at creating public discussion and explaining its reservations more clearly, the Nationalist Party came across as homophobic, old fashioned and opposing just for the sake of it.

NET television is not enough – see ‘the medium is the message’ – but with TVM controlled by the government and its no-discussion agenda, NET television will have to get its act together.

The ripples created by Chris Packham’s show only go to highlight how little Maltese television is achieving. Why did that have to be Chris Packham flying in from England when there are television journalists here on the ground in Malta who could have done the same thing at Mizieb, but spectacularly failed to do so?

Why isn’t a similar programme being made by Maltese television journalists, and why isn’t it on prime time? His show also shows us how powerful rolling cameras are. Would that you’re-provocating-me hunter have shown his true colours if it were not for the power of the lens and microphone? Of course not.

TV puts politicians under pressure, and that is exactly where Joseph Muscat and his team should be. They have got off scot free for far too long.