TVM has refused to explain its failure to prominently report the pope’s anti-corruption message during a speech on Saturday. Shortly after his arrival, in a speech given side-by-side with President George Vella, Pope Francis hammered home the point about how corruption impacts society. “May you always cultivate legality and transparency which will enable the eradication of corruption and criminality, neither of which acts openly and in broad daylight,” he told an audience of dignitaries at the Grandmaster’s Palace, in Valletta. While the anti-corruption stance made front-page news in all of Malta’s independent websites and newspapers, the national broadcaster instead chose to focus on the pope’s flowery description of Malta as the “heart of the Mediterranean”. TVM emphasised how the pontiff reflected on the “confluence of winds” affecting Malta from various directions, both socially and politically. It reported the pope’s description of Malta as a “nest of historical events” and the thousands of years “welcoming persons of different nationalities”. No references, however, were made to the pope’s anti-corruption message in TVM’s online report of his speech and neither was it...
