Let us remember the meaning of 'conflict of interest'

My bona fide blog ‘PR and journalism should not mix’ was written just as MT let the cat out of the bag: WEadvertise Ltd, is in charge of the public relations campaign of the White Rocks project. AlthoughLou Bondi and Peppi Azzopardi are not the only journalists involved with PR campaigns, the White Rocks issue clearly illustrates the incestuous relationship that exists between some journalists and public relations.

Yesterday the Times’ confirmed WE’s involvement in a story by journalist Christian Peregin, who asked several people, including myself, for their responses. Very high profile public figures astoundingly dismissed the ‘conflict of interest’ and so please allow me to cite eloquent others to refresh our amnesiac minds of its meaning. 

“A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person... has private or personal interest sufficient to appear to influence the objective exercise of his or her duty... there is no need for the objective exercise of a person’s work-related duties to be truly compromised, only that it ‘appears’ to be compromised.” wrote Patricia Parsons, author of the Ethics of Public Relations.

Admittedly, the Maltese Journalistic Code of Ethics does not offer much guidance on the matter. It merely asserts that journalists misbehave “whenever commissions or requests are accepted to give undeserved publicity”.It says nothing about journalists who sell out and it cannot do much to deal with challenging situations. Yet, there are now efforts for a European Code of Journalism Ethics.  This specifies that journalists shouldnot be influenced by the business interests of third parties or their own personal economic interests. Nonchalant media organizations may still decide to ignore this principle but when they face the moment of truth, they cannot expect the public to trust them.

WE has grown big over the years. There are many areas where they positively contributed to the evolution of the Maltese media. It is clear they are facing a crossroad. The revenue from the PR campaigns of multi-million projects, as also revealed in other press reports today, are a great temptation as it is revenue that could further entrench the position of their business in the media market. Yet the White Rocks debate involves the government and private investors. We are told that this is a €200 million sports project that will include 300 apartments on 221,000 metres of prime land. We are told that the consortium obtained the land from the government at a give-away-price. The Maltese public sphere needs autonomous and credible media players whom they can trust to present all aspects senza interessi.

At this point WE may have forfeited this important role. Although they have publicly acknowledged that they are behind the PR campaign, producing programmes that are perceived to be credible is now difficult. The space where such a debate should take place is PBS. At some point PBS contracted WE to produce reliable public service content and so, as things stand, the public is the biggest loser.