Poverty portrayed : a creative role for Maltese television

Abstract

This study analyzed the level of creativity and portrayal of poverty within three Maltese television programmes aired at prime time on TVM, the Maltese National television station. This was accomplished through qualitative methods of data collection and analysis, namely in depth personal interviews and textual analysis of a handpicked sample of the programmes under investigation. The interviews were conducted with nine different stakeholders, namely producers, human rights activists, advertisers and the Chief Executive of the Malta Broadcasting Authority. These interviews revealed that producers adopted a passive approach towards poverty as their ideas and suggestions reflect a short term vision. Conversely, human rights activists believed that in general Maltese TV applied a needs based approach towards the issue of poverty, and this resulted in a lack of creativity. Producers associated creativity mainly with the genre of their content. The interviews further revealed that producers were aware of producing sensationalist stories because in their view those stories form part of Maltese reality. The textual analysis revealed that producers limited creativity to the edited features within their programme. The study concluded that progress and creativity were limited in view of the growth of the popularity of the programmes. It suggested that creativity could be implemented to produce programmes that are persuasive, credible and influential, thus without portraying poverty as an irreversible cause.