The study “Malta’s Media System from the Perspective of Journalists and Editors” with the subtitle “A Case Study Applying Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) Theoretical Framework” by Norman Vella from University of Leicester and Joseph Borg and Mary Anne Lauri from University of Malta applied the four-dimension lens from Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) study to analyze the Maltese media system and the changes in it.
Malta is the smallest country in the European Union with a population of roughly half a million people. The Maltese media system, since the 1990s, has been evolving from a press system dominated by political and other institutions (such as the Catholic Church) to a commercially dominated one. Changes in media systems are not unusual – they are not static.
In 2017, the Maltese media system was shaken by the car bomb assassination of a prominent journalist: Daphne Caruana Galizia. In her blog, she had revealed stories of massive alleged corruption in politics and big business. This assassination prompted the Council of Europe (2019) to pressure Malta, which led to a public inquiry and reforms to create a more enabling environment for the journalists.
The study owes much to Hallin and Mancini’s (2004) classifications. Indeed, the research question asks which of the three models presented in their study does the Maltese system fit into, and the perceptions of journalists are analyzed with the four dimensions in that study: political parallelism, journalistic professionalism, the role of the state, and the local media market.
The study was a combination of qualitative and quantitative. The quantitative part involved an online questionnaire of journalists and editors, consisting of closed-end questions, Likert, and binary choices. The qualitative part involved “elite interviews” of participants chosen for their expertise in the field. Eight people occupying senior editorial positions were interviewed in-depth.
The findings place Malta into the Polarised Pluralist or Mediterranean Model of Hallin and Mancini (2004). Institutions such as the state, political parties, and the Catholic Church all play an important role in this model. Television, in particular, is almost completely controlled by the government.
Although there has been movement toward the Liberal or North Atlantic model, this transformation has been adversely impacted by several events. The assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia increased advocacy and activism, and the economic dimension has been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic and the limitations of the small size of the market.
Through interviews, it was revealed that Maltese journalists and editors are very much aware that their role in the media system is overshadowed by politics. They see the future of the Maltese media system as dependent on political decisions.
The authors speculate on the future of the system and note that if the political parties feel that they do not need television stations any longer, the system will undergo radical changes that might lead the media system into transforming closer to the liberal model. However, negative economic developments combined with the small size of the marker might derail this development.
The article “Malta’s Media System from the Perspective of Journalists and Editors” by Norman Vella, Joseph Borg and Mary Anne Lauri is in Journalism Practice. (free abstract).
Picture: Untitled by aitac. From Valletta, Malta.
License Unsplash.