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The media landscape in Malta

Malta's media landscape is strongly influenced by the former colonial power Britain and its geographic proximity to Italy, as well as political and Church institutions. With a population of 400,000, Malta has 15 newspapers, 9 television stations and almost 50 radio stations.

Karmeliterkirche
Foto: lloydi, Lizenz: Creative Commons by-nc-sa/2.0

Malta was under British rule from 1814 to 1964, and English is an official language alongside Maltese. This bilingualism is reflected in the media, with two dailies and five weeklies in English and two dailies and six weeklies in Maltese. While the English-language newspapers are purely commercial in nature, with one exception the Maltese-language papers are owned by political parties, unions or the Church. In all cases these affiliations influence editorial policy. Since the country's independence in 1964, the media has largely been seen as an effective tool in the fight for voters in the two-party system. The newspaper with the largest circulation is the Times of Malta. Individual journalists' private blogs also attract considerable attention.

Malta's geographic location south of Italy has influenced the development of radio broadcasting. The first Maltese radio stations were established in the 1930s to counteract fascist propaganda. Italian television stations have been received in the country since 1957, while the first Maltese television station was founded five years later. Nowadays most Maltese watch local stations whose programmes are for the most part in Maltese. Malta is also the sole European country where political parties may own television stations directly. Both the Labour Party and the Nationalist Party have operated radio and television stations since the 1990s. These function as party mouthpieces and dominate the market together with the public television station TVM and a station run by the Ministry of Education. The market share of private television stations lies under five percent.

In the radio sector, by contrast, several commercial stations have been able to gain a strong foothold. Apart from those run by the country's Public Broadcasting Services, two Church-run radio stations also play a role in the Catholic country.

This country's media at euro|topics