The Chair is sitting pretty

Harold Wilson once said that a week is a long time in politics – which makes two weeks a very long time.

The last time my column appeared on these pages I was complaining about the gradual decline in freedom of expression in this country, especially with the government’s plans for a new media law and the state the Broadcasting Authority (BA) is in under its government-appointed chair.

Things have come to a head on both fronts. On the media bill, the government has had to make a humiliating retreat on one indefensible point that it defended for weeks, and at the BA the temperature has now reached boiling point.

Updating the Press Act

We are beyond the “best before” date of our Press Act. We are also beyond the point where tinkering and tweaking the words of the law would have sufficed. The cultural and technological changes we have seen in the last couple of decades require more fundamental changes to the laws governing the sector.

Here, Labour had the opportunity to shine. It could have presented plans for a law that takes as its starting point freedom of expression, as one of the basic rights on which our democratic society would be based. Safeguards would be defined to protect that freedom from those who would want to restrict it on one side and those who would abuse it on the other. The last thing the Nationalist Opposition would have done is to stand in the way – or even to be seen as standing in the way – of a step in the right direction.

Labour’s inverted methods

Instead, the whole thing was shuffled upside down. Labour was more concerned about putting in place restrictions – some of them not even contemplated by the Press Act for less enlightened times – than protecting such a fundamental freedom.

One provision in particular was of concern: the requirement in the Press Act that obliged newspaper editors to register with a Press Commissioner was not only retained but extended to all services carrying news – including all websites. This means the pensioner who innocently re-posts news articles on his Facebook page; the academic or the teenager who creates a news blog in Wordpress; an Instagram account with news photos.

The government’s forced u-turn

Now the Labour government is not stupid and it is unlikely that it devised a system that would require so many people to register as to make it impractical. No, we’re familiar enough with the Labour government to know it will accept that the vast majority of websites inhabit a legal grey area; the full force of the law will be applied to those sites that carry news and commentary that the government deems to be too critical. It would also have served to warn those who might have wanted to turn the heat on the Labour government: ‘don’t you dare’.

No wonder that the many voices that cried foul were not confined to the Nationalist Opposition. Experts, academics and journalists alike decried this atrocious bill. For days, Ministers spoke for the bill as proposed by the government. They called press conferences. They sparred with us on TV. And then it dawned on them. No one – simply no one – was buying their argument. And this week they had to walk away with their tails between their legs and announce that the government was dropping the registration plans.

So, thanks to the Opposition and to all those who spoke out vociferously against the Orwellian nature of the government’s original proposals, we see the forced registration of websites, criminal libels and garnishee orders against journalists removed, although the government insists on keeping the hefty fines it proposes to impose.

Legal authority lacking moral authority

Since my last column ap- peared, there was a call for industrial action at the BA by the union representing staff. The industrial action, which included a one-hour strike, is still ongoing as I write and a conciliation meeting – for which the chairperson was not even present – has failed to produce results. As the UHM, representing the workers, said: the chairperson’s offers are now a little too late.

I need not highlight the significant constitutional and political role of this Authority, especially as we enter the last year before a general election. Now government entities are chock-a-block with Labour Party hacks making a dog’s dinner of their tasks, but this is nothing compared to the BA, where the appointed chairperson is going out of her way to completely wreck the Authority for which she is responsible, bullying and harassing its workers.

The BA has been forced to the negotiating table after a letter from the staff to Joseph Muscat highlighting their plight went unheeded by the Prime Minister. Had he chosen someone who is qualified for the job or, at the very least, understands the implications and responsibilities of the role, then all this would have been avoided.

The chairperson has lost both the moral authority and the trust required to lead.