Sharon Spiteri's musings

Sharon Spiteri, well known to readers of The Times, is back in the UK where she has been supplementing her journalistic experience with a degree from Cardiff. Refreshed from her Malta break she is now in Glasgow to take on her PhD ambitions. A theatre enthusiast and lover of red wine who I know well from the BJ's jazz days, Sharon will thankfully keep in touch with her friends via blogging and emails. This is her take on the news in Malta:

... so in Malta the two most watched programmes are news programmes. The first is the kind which takes place in a large studio with a panel of “guest experts” and an audience which is present and allowed to comment (something like Jerry Springer) but the topics are culled from news items. They had an asylum one a couple of weeks ago and I’m still waiting to get the recording for the pleasure of three hours of pure, unadulterated racism aired on live TV *sigh*

The other is a Parkinson’s type of programme which varies from one-on-ones to round-table debates. Anyway Maltese people are obsessed with politics and the news and see the two as interchangeable. The 8 p.m. news on state television, for years the only news programme, is still an “institution” despite the fact that it’s crap and that it has some serious competition from other stations.

News in Malta is extremely sanitised, no corpses, no mention of suicides, no sex, no foray into the private lives of public persons. I once wrote that a murder victim had been found in the text book position of autoerotic sex (asphyxiation/strangulation during sex) and all hell broke loose hehehehe. Another time I said that a murder victim was homosexual and I was sued for libel bahahahahaha!

Sharon Spiteri: Musings from Scotland