THE STORMING out of a CyBC studio while a show was being broadcast on Monday night, by DIKO deputy Nicholas Papadopoulos sparked the customary debate about the state broadcaster’s pro-government bias. This debate takes place every few years, particularly when elections are approaching, with opposition parties accusing the corporation of lacking impartiality and giving excessive coverage to the government of the day.
It is exactly the same debate we hear with regard to nepotism. When a party is in opposition, it sees nepotism and corruption everywhere, but when it is in power meritocracy reigns supreme. It is a childish debate that no rational person could ever take seriously, but this has never stopped opposition politicians from taking the moral high ground and mouthing off against political favouritism. People in glass houses make a habit of throwing stones in Cyprus.
Papadopoulos showed that he subscribed to this tradition, when he stormed out of the studio on Monday, because the presenter of the show was giving more time to the AKEL guests to express their views. This may have been so, but Papadopoulos is smart enough to know that the CyBC has always been used by the government of the day to promote its positions.
When his father, the late Tassos Papadopoulos, was president things were no different. He made one of his closest associates chairman of the corporation and appointed, through the back-door, one of his most zealous supporters as general manager; not to mention the hiring of several hawkish journalists, who displayed open hostility towards any politician that disagreed with the president’s line on the Cyprus problem. The DIKO deputy never complained about the corporation’s blatant bias then, because he agreed with it.
The truth is that ever since the days of Makarios the CyBC has been used as a government mouthpiece and no president would allow anything less. But things have gradually improved even though constraints remain and it would be unrealistic to expect an authoritarian president like Christofias not to exercise control over the state broadcaster and use it for his propaganda purposes. The fact is that an independent and objective CyBC has never been on the agenda of any president.
And this is implicitly accepted by the political parties, which passed legislation dictating how much air-time must be given to political parties on news shows. We have the ludicrous situation whereby the corporation is obliged by law to report the views of all parliamentary parties when covering an issue of public interest, no matter how uninteresting and irrelevant these may be. Denying a journalist the right to use his judgment in how the news is presented is also interference.
Our political parties have always been the biggest obstacles to establishing an independent and objective state broadcaster, so they should stop complaining about the CyBC’s bias.
