The party-owned broadcasting media
It’s about time the PN starts adopting a social media strategy to balance that of the Labour party
Michael Falzon
19 January 2021, 7:53am
The situation in Malta with political parties owning their own broadcasting media – radio and television stations – is probably unique in liberal democracies all over the world.
The reason why this is so is simply the result of the reaction to the abuse of public broadcasting ever since the Mintoff regime nationalised the only licensed – but privately owned – radio and television stations. Subsequently, public broadcasting became simply the voice of the party in power with the Opposition’s voice being heard only during the political broadcasts organised by the Broadcasting Authority. Today, these are organised only during general election campaigns and not regularly every year as they used to be.
The test of a people is how it behaves toward the old.
As the outbreak of coronavirus spread this past spring, the world of biomedical ethics exploded with journal articles, consensus statements, and blog posts arguing over the proper criteria for rationing ventilators and other scarce medical resources. The flashpoint came from some of the earliest pandemic guidelines, which appeared to promote discrimination against the elderly the most likely to die from the disease.
In a widely cited statement, published online in the
New England Journal of Medicinein late March, bioethicist Ezekiel Emanuel of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues argued for a strategy for allocating medical resources that would maximize benefits by both “saving more lives and more years of life.” In practice, rationing on the basis of life-years strongly favors young people, who have more years left to live than the elderly and people with disabilities. Given “limited time and information”
For cinephiles, there is an undeniable mystique surrounding âlostâ films. How does a film vanish? How could those involved in making it â the producers, the director, the cast and the crew â allow the culmination of their blood, sweat and tears to fade into obscurity? Yet, it has happened again and again over the years: All copies of certain feature films and short films cease to exist in any studio archives, private collections, or public archives, such as the U.S. Library of Congress.
Copies of many early films no longer exist. According to the Martin Scorsese s Film Foundation, more than 90% of American films made before 1929 are lost. Most of these films were intentionally destroyed: It was common practice to throw out or recycle films after their initial run because vault space was limited and the filmmakers thought the products had no future value.