The State of State Media Report Used in Malta to Grill Minister About Maltese PBS

Maltese news portal The Shift has referred to CMDS Director Marius Dragomir’s study on the state media to grill a minister in the office of the prime minister about the poor state of Maltese public service media.

Independent Maltese news portal The Shift writes that Minister Carmelo Abela has failed to respond to questions from The Shift about research which described public broadcasting in Malta as state-controlled media. The article explains that Marius Dragomir’s report “described PBS [Malta’s Public Broadcasting Services] as state-controlled due to its dependence on the state in terms of its funding, governing structure, ownership and editorial control.” The portal has received no answer from the minister or his spokesperson.

The State of State Media report, which you can read here, looks at 546 state-administered media companies in 151 countries, and classifies them in its brand new typology, the State Media Matrix.

Of the seven state media models identified by the report, characterized by various degrees of independence, PBS is put under the “state-controlled media” category. The report notes that in southern Europe, in many places “the state maintains its control over the state media,” and lists, along with PBS, CyBC and BRTK in Cyprus, ERT in Greece, RAI in Italy, and RTVE in Spain, as examples.