The very human side of the news media

Imagine one hot August Sunday afternoon 13 years ago. Everyone is either having the afternoon nap, sun-bathing on the beach or abroad. Lethargy is rampant. It’s the peak of summer. Only a poof fellow, albeit in an air-conditioned environment, is checking and re-checking the radio station’s newsroom fax machine (there was no Internet at the time in Malta) for any breaking news.

With a mere half-an-hour to go for the main news bulletin in the evening, the fax machines rolls back into life. It’s a police report. A woman had died electrocuted in Gozo. Yippee! Something to start the news bulletin with. And the journalist hurriedly worked on the report, happy the day had been saved by the fatal electrocution.

This is no anecdote. I was that part-time cub reporter. Today I have a different outlook on the meaning of life and its loss.

Summer time is very much like Christmas time. There is little work and much more fun. For those, journalists included, who have to work on week-ends, holidays and unfriendly hours, there could be little worse than having to sit down at work, stare at people having a whale of a time, without anything to do.

This has happened to me several times along the years, especially when I was working for media that have daily and hourly deadlines. The latest occurrence I observed was this morning.

Readers who would have tried to take a look at the Maltese online news websites and try to find a tiny little piece of breaking news would have been disappointed. Nothing. Nada. Rien. Xejn. Politicians are taking it very easy except for attending parties and other celebrations related to this season. Business is quite hectic, and the new products/services/stocks have already been announced and promoted weeks ago.

Several enterprises and institutions would have already entertained journalists and other media-related staff for Christmas drinks or sumptuous lunches. Some of these would have made an announcement, but nothing special.

Breaking news becomes a very rare commodity when everyone is thinking in terms of parties and revelry and not how to exploit the fourth estate. There would be the occasional police report about a traffic accidents but the nation-wide campaigns against drink-driving have been paying off in the last few years.

So what can journalists write about apart from the country’s leaders calling for unity and solidarity? Very little. Many a press release, left at the barrel’s end, would be published in toto when otherwise it would have never been considered for publication at other times of the year.

A flair of creativity would do the trick but it is very easy to fall into the trap of the usual reporting on the plight of the homeless, or that child who would be spending Christmas in hospital rather than home.

This brings me to the main point of this entry: who controls the media? Who dictates what is published and what is left out? Sometimes it’s circumstantial. When half the staff-room is on leave, the editor invited to lunch, and the poor part-timer staring on the news desk praying for something to happen, the media is at its weakest. It is passive, waiting for something to happen, and when that happens, there’s the danger it is blown out of proportion because there is nothing else to fill the air-time or the space on the newspapers or web page.

Would it be better for the news media to go on vacation rather than try to fill-in the news space with the scrap and crap? I still haven’t found an answer.

Best wishes to you all. May the news media report more positive and less negative news in 2006.

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We are still walking alone

Each time I am invited to give a talk or a lecture about electronic journalism or the Internet, I get excited. I admit I get carried away in the true style of an evangelist who gets his audience mesmerised but the effects of his words wear out quite quickly as the audience leaves the meeting room or hall.

I have been repeating over and over ageing for years now Internet is changing the shape of the media landscape and it is not a simple development in technology or the much-hyped word “convergence”. Newspapers are not simply meeting radio and television. Hypertext-driven Internet is gobbling and then taking the place of newspapers, radio and television.

The enlightened few, and please allow some self-praise to say MaltaMedia is indeed one of these, have been harping on it since the end of the 1990s. But a voice in the desert it has been, all along.

Not that deserts are all that bare. Caravans and Bedouins are part of the desert landscape. Many live off the desert. So it is not such a bad place after all, if you can find water, or even better, a watershed.

The watershed in Malta’s history of Internet-media relations has been the launch of the first web-only news service by MaltaMedia in 1999. A few others followed with varying success. Then radios started to stream their FM broadcasts online 24/7 and newspapers started to copy their news articles online after the news agents would have sold their printed copies.

Another major development was the launch of the e-journalism category of the Malta Journalism Awards in 2003. MaltaMedia has won two out of the first three editions. Yet I am sure this category is, and will be for the foreseeable future, the Cinderella of the awards, when compared to mammoth importance attached to the print or broadcast categories, monopolised by the established media houses.

The thing that worries me most is not that online journalism is just walking its first steps, and just like any toddler, it needs to grow up to fend for itself. What worries me is that many still think of Internet in terms of new medium to ‘copy-paste’ a newspaper article or a TV news bulletin or stream a whole radio station night and day.

The intro to Toni Sant's weekly podcasts is poignant: only 6 year-old still listen to what the radios have to offer. The rest chose what they want to listen to online.

In three year’s time Internet in Malta will be a teenager, yet I feel many will still look down at it as a toddler.

It’s very easy quote examples from abroad. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of saying ‘Malta is always behind the rest of the world’.

Look at this article from the Washington Post. The most sacred of journalism awards, the Pulitzer, is waking up to the reality of online news. Steve Levingston says

Next year's Pulitzer Prize for breaking news could go to stories that appeared only on a newspaper's Web site, according to changes announced yesterday by the Pulitzer board.

As part of a series of changes, the board that oversees the most prestigious awards in journalism said it will allow newspapers to submit online-only material for consideration for the top honor in breaking news and in news photography. The board also said that online photos and stories could be included as part of submissions in all 14 journalism categories.

The shift comes as newspapers across the country are grappling with declines in print circulation as online readership is rising. Publishers and editors have boosted resources for their Web sites and beefed up their online presence while scrambling to enliven their print editions for the Internet age.

Malta’s online news and other media have to walk their own path. Things will only get more interesting with the launch of 3G mobile services next year. What should we call breaking news services on mobile or video-on-demand news bulletins on mobile phones? Let’s not mistake the wood for the trees.

God save the …

In Maltese we have the saying “nispiccaw bil-God Save the Queen” (ending with the God Save the Queen, the British national anthem), which is used to highlight the fact that something had ended in a bad way.

It’s further proof of our colonial roots. Some say we Maltese are still a colony, at least in the way we look at ourselves in the mirror. Going back through our history we see the Maltese at one time fighting for more independence but in other times trying to attach themselves to a foreign power for more (perceived) prosperity and peace of mind.

For example, the Maltese tried to protect their semi-autonomy in the 15th Century after the infamous uprising against the feudal lord Gonsalvo Monroy. They lost this autonomy when the Maltese Islands were given to the Knights of St. John.

Then again, a few ‘enlightened’ Maltese proved an invaluable Fifth Column for the French invaders led by General Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798. When the relation with the new masters turned immediately sour the Maltese leaders sought new times with an emerging maritime power: England. It took 164-179 years for the Maltese to get rid of the English.

The colonial experience has left its mark on the Maltese way of thinking. The relative prosperity under the Knights, who could afford giving hundreds of loaves of bread for free every day and feed their sick at the Sacra Infermeria with silver cutlery, was a stark contrast to the continuous struggle for survival of the Middle Ages.

There were few instances where the Maltese really got the Knights on their nerves, such as with the uprising of the priests in the 18th century when the Order’s decline was starting to take its toll.

Many Maltese still shouted ‘Viva s-Sultan’ (Long Live the Grand Master) as long as they got the free loaf of bread.

When the French simply stopped giving this free loaf of bread, the Maltese revolted against the French insensitivity on Church matters and asked the English to kick the French out of Malta.

From then on many Maltese shouted ‘Long Live the King/Queen’ as long as the British brought the money-spending sailors of the Royal Navy in the Grand Harbour.

The movement for independence gained ground, like in many other colonies, after the Second World War. Once we got our independence on the 21st September 1964, the Maltese quickly substituted the Queen with the government. Some one had to give the freebees and continue the old tradition established by the Knights.

From then on many Maltese shouted “Viva l-Lejber” or “Ejjew Nazzjonalisti” and as long as the two main parties took care of their supporters with jobs for the boys (and girls), the majority was happy.

But then the Nationalist Party raised the issue of membership in the European Union and it managed to convince the majority to support this vision. And maybe quite a few Maltese would have thought that it would not be a bad idea to have the EU now giving freebies to Malta, in the old tradition.

So the Maltese always look up to who’s in power to get that little something extra without the extra effort. And then, is something goes wrong, it’s always fancy to say it’s the government’s fault or Europe’s fault. And the Maltese can say it quite rudely with ‘f*** il-gvern’ …

But this entry is not intended as a historical lecture. Actually it was inspired by the fact that the government’s far-reaching attempt to go online is bearing its fruit and is being recognised even abroad.

Indeed information technology is already changing the interaction between authority and citizen. Having government services online, such as renewing a driving license, asking for a birth certificate, or simply asking a question, goes much deeper than avoiding the queues.

Government is becoming more accountable. It is difficult to erase the flow of work when it is digitised and this is making service providers more accountable. On the other hand, the government knows everything about you, and even the remotest corner of government can be aware of what you are up to as a citizen within seconds.

The relationship between government and citizen is changing. No, not the Big Brother scenario again. I like to look at it more as an era of empowerment of the citizen and government. There is nowhere to hide, for both of them.