Media literacy board to be appointed to strengthen citizens’ skills on effective use of media

Minister Carmelo Abela, responsible for national broadcasting, said that the government is currently working on appointing a media literacy board – a new concept aimed to strengthen citizens’ skills and knowledge to enable the more effective use of media.

This measure emerges from a bill amending the Broadcasting Act, which is awaiting approval by Parliament.

Minister Abela spoke on this matter while addressing an online seminar on teaching children how to recognise if news is real or fake, organised by the Mater Boni Consilii St Joseph School in Paola and the Finnish NGO Faktabaar.

In his address, he appealed for students and journalists to actively dispel fake news while offering tips on mounting a fight against fake news whereby citizens make sure that they are “neither consumers nor producers” of misinformation. He spoke about how this is of particular importance at a time when more than 4 billion people use social media, with an average of nearly 2 million new users joining every day.

He also mentioned studies which show that the world is spending more time on social media, with the typical user now spending roughly 15% of their waking life using social media platforms. Minister Abela referred to the 2020 EU Kids Online research, coordinated by the University of Malta in collaboration with Tech.mt and the BeSmartOnline! consortium, which reported that Maltese children aged between 9 and 16 years of age spend over three hours online daily. With a representative sample of 1,234 Maltese boys and girls, the report also underlines how 17% of the participants use online sources to look for news.

On this matter, Minister Abela said: “Considering how social media and other online sources have emerged as channels of media hype and fake news in recent years, it is only natural to assess our capabilities to critically distinguish between what is real and what is fake. Unfortunately, many of us tend not to look to the source of a story to verify its truth.”

In his concluding remarks, the minister thanked journalists for the work they do in order to keep fake news at bay.