Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1514895
10 OPINION maltatoday | WEDNESDAY • 24 JANUARY 2024 Dr Mark Said is a veteran lawyer Mark Said THE media outlets that are fi- nanced by our taxes have never been so heavily under editori- al control or influence by the government. We are being en- slaved by a state-controlled me- dia whose editorial freedom has been taken away by government influence, pressure, or money. These outlets are increasingly being used to push government propaganda. Information is being concen- trated in the hands of a few elites, the few who are in po- litical power. We are living in a society where the state has sig- nificant control over the media and where the temptation for our rulers to abuse this power for their own ends is too great to resist. Given the chance, our politicians are using their sway over the media to manipulate information reaching the pub- lic, serving their private inter- ests at the expense of society. The worst social outcomes can easily be predicted where the media is more heavily con- trolled by the government. In the case of our explicitly state-owned media outlets, it is not difficult to imagine how the government influences media-provided information. These outlets are financed entirely by the state and con- sequently do not rely on con- sumers to remain afloat. Since they are beholden to the state for funding, state-owned me- dia outlets have a strong in- centive to avoid being critical of the current government. Furthermore, as state-owned enterprises, these outlets are run exclusively by govern- ment-appointed directors who determine both the stories that will be covered and the light in which these stories will be conveyed. Politicians in power thus choose directors and edi- tors who will do their bidding, creating heavily biassed news. Our state-manipulated media tends to take two specific forms: information withholding, in which the state prevents media outlets from disseminating unfa- vourable news, and misinforma- tion, in which the state uses its control to bias news in a way that favours incumbent politicians or to fabricate untruthful news that will favour these actors. If voters do not receive relevant informa- tion about the policy behaviour of politicians or receive informa- tion about this behaviour that is false, then the monitoring capac- ity of the media is compromised, and the information it provides cannot be used as the basis for voter punishment. This means two negative things for policy. On the one hand, politicians who refuse to pursue policies in the public's interest will not be effectively weeded out via the election pro- cess, while, on the other hand, if political agents know this, they have an additional incentive to indulge in the creation of pol- icies that serve private rather than public ends. Objectively, the consequence is that less information and/or less accurate information about the behaviour of politicians and political happenings reach- es the public, compromising voters' ability to use the media to hold unscrupulous political agents accountable. It is objec- tive because the occurrence is independent of citizens' knowl- edge about the status of infor- mation manipulation in this country. Subjectively, the con- sequence of state-manipulated broadcasting is dependent on the citizens' awareness of the extent of media manipulation in our country. Our state broadcasting system has long been suffering from a credibility crisis. We have long been aware that the informa- tion reaching us is filtered and have lost trust in media-pro- vided information, discounting even accurate information that reaches us because we can nev- er be certain of its credibility. Manipulation and disinfor- mation tactics played an im- portant role in the last general election, damaging citizens' ability to choose their leaders based on factual news and au- thentic debate. The incumbent government employed armies of "opinion shapers" to spread government views, drive par- ticular agendas, and counter government critics on social media. The government is now bol- stering the false perception that most citizens stand with it, with the result that it is able to justify crackdowns on the po- litical opposition and advance antidemocratic changes to laws and institutions without a proper debate. Worryingly, state-sponsored manipulation of broadcasting means is often coupled with broader restric- tions on the news media that prevent access to objective re- porting and render the weaker of us more susceptible to disin- formation. Coupled with that, in spite of some weak reforms in our na- tional broadcasting set-up, in- ternational standards are still not completely met, and the few we have are not properly implemented and promoted. But even if we were to introduce such standards, we would have to redress a situation where government officials providing information are undertrained, too few, or supporting a cul- ture of secrecy. There is still too much bureaucracy, putting objective and factual informa- tion out of reach for the general public. Information is increasingly being seen as a common good, whose protection falls on all citizens concerned with the quality of public debate. It is State-manipulated media