Why MaltaToday’s Actions Are Only Part Of A Much Bigger Problem
If MaltaToday has excelled at one thing over the past two decades, it is environmental journalism. The newspaper has employed some excellent journalists over the years and empowered them to lead important campaigns irrespective of who was in government. The newspaper has also fought for good governance, media independence and against the blurring of lines between advertising and journalism.
So when the newspaper contacted Lovin Malta yesterday and asked to buy advertising space on behalf of the government’s Central Link Project, we were stunned and we had to inform our readers.
Lovin Malta has always insisted with its advertisers that sponsored content must be declared as sponsored content. Otherwise, how can readers determine whether or not a piece of content was written against payment? In this case, it is not merely sponsored content but the handling of an entire nationwide media campaign – a contract probably worth tens of thousands of euro of taxpayer money – on a very sensitive topic. How could we act as if it’s business as usual?
Readers deserve to know about it, even if journalists at MaltaToday still do their best to report the Central Link Project fairly.
That MaltaToday has diversified its business interests to become a marketing agency, including the production of advertising material and media buying on behalf of government, is a difficult pill to swallow. It does not exactly spark confidence in what should be a fiercely independent media house. Instead, it sends the message that MaltaToday has given up on being able to run a news organisation on the standard business model and is ready to do anything to stay afloat, even if it means getting into compromising commercial relationships that are very difficult to navigate. What will this mean for its journalism moving forward?
The video banner sent to Lovin Malta by MediaToday on behalf of Central Link Project and Infrastructure Malta
Then again, Lovin Malta also produces advertising content and buys space on Facebook on behalf of clients to promote that content, including clients in the public sector. So what exactly is the difference?
The real problem in this case is the sheer lack of transparency. All of Lovin Malta’s sponsored content is categorised as such and easily searchable. If the planning authority decides to advertise with us, as it has in the past, our content will be there for all to see (and judge) and our journalistic work can be assessed within that context.
In MaltaToday’s case, however, this transaction is hidden. Unless exposed, there is no way of knowing that MaltaToday is being paid for this and other campaigns.
There are also other questions we must ask.
Does it make sense for MaltaToday to be determining how to allocate a government advertising campaign? Should an entity be given such an advantage over its competitors? What portion of these marketing campaigns is MaltaToday dedicating to its own publications, as opposed to its competitors? And when it does buy an advert on its own platform on behalf of the government, is it also taking a 15% agency commission? Does that make sense for the taxpayer?
Besides all these pending questions, this whole case also highlights another problem: that there are no rules governing this sort of behaviour, despite the fact that taxpayer money is involved.
Ultimately, when public money is used for propaganda, there must be rules. A free-for-all is undesirable for everybody involved.
The current situation is totally unacceptable. At its whim, the government can decide to hand over all of its advertising money to MaltaToday to allocate. Similarly, nobody can stop the government from choosing to spend all of its money on Labour-owned media instead. Or, worse still, the government can spend all its money on Facebook and Google, leaving the Maltese media without a cent from the biggest advertiser in the country.
Any of these things would have serious consequences on our democracy and journalism.
In the information age, where technology has made social media advertising so sophisticated that it can be weaponised, we must have rules that govern how taxpayer money is used on us.
Here are just a few examples of regulations we must consider:
1. Governments should be obliged to spend a portion of their budgets on the local press so that the country can rest assured their governments will be held accountable.
2. Government advertising should be divided fairly, according to a number of KPIs such as readership, demographics, pricing etc. Advertising should not be used as a carrot or stick against journalistic enterprises.
3. All government advertising should be transparent. We should know who is buying space from whom and we should know who is selling it. This is why paid-for content that is not marked as sponsored should become illegal. Transparency is key.
And perhaps we should also have rules as to what other businesses a news organisation should start.
Maybe we’re happy for newspapers to become marketing agencies. But maybe that’s a line we, as a nation, might not want to cross.
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