Return of Bla Agenda

Norman Hamilton's popular Bla Agenda chat show has been running for twelve years on ONE TV hosting over 1,700 personalities. It will resume on October 7 with the following guests: Mons. Lawrence Gatt, Director at the Dar tal-Providenza, broadcaster Simone Cini, the new chairman at the Malta Tourism Authority Sam Mifsud, and Dr Michael Vella Haber, managing director of One Productions. Norman Hamilton is a charismatic veteran broadcaster who trained with Terry Wogan in the sixties. Not afraid to speak his mind, these are his views on political broadcasting as told to MaltaToday:

It is evident that the TV medium has been hijacked by the establishment. This is bad for democracy. In the democratic countries of the west it has been the tradition with journalists to fill the role of guardians of public morals, focusing mainly on the performance of the government of the day. This role has been the duty and the privilege of the press since the French Revolution. In totalitarian countries a free press was an oxymoron. In Malta today we are witnessing the gagging of the free press with a massive exercise in covert manipulation. We have TV programmes masquerading as a vox-pop contribution to the national debate. We have subtle propaganda underlying a whole array of seemingly innocent programming. I am happy to say I am no party to such a parody of democracy and democratic freedom of the press. I produce and present a TV programme which lives up to its name – Bla Agenda. It is a programme that definitely has no hidden agenda or agendas. I am equally glad that the station which beams the programme has never intimated a wish that would go contrary to my idea of what a family programme should be. I would like to see others taking my example. It would certainly help to reduce what you correctly call “the overwhelming presence” of politics in broadcasting.