So how do you feel about giving a raise to the employees of the MBC to reward them for their professional services? Your answer doesn’t really matter for you will be called upon to do exactly that very soon as the TV license increases by 50%; Prime minister Ramgoolam confi rmed in Parliament the other day that the money will go towards funding the PRB for MBC employees. 

The MBC has chosen for the past few years to be blind and deaf to the way its actions are being perceived by the public; the very same public whose money pays for the running of what is supposed to be a public service. The MBC through its management has decided that its role is to promote without discernment whatever government wants to promote and to calumniate everyone and everything management deems to be hostile to its management and to government. All in blatant disregard of the MBC Act and the IBA Act. Two legislations that are ignored at willand used only when it serves the MBC’s purpose.

The decision of the MBC to stop running the ad about how sick our country is, is a case in point. But the MBC gets away with it because everybody is scared; the IBA is scared to enforce the law and the promoters of the ad are too scared to fight for their right.

So, surfing on this wave of fear and intimidation, the management of the MBC, conveniently forgetting that they have been entrusted with a very important public service, use the news bulletin to settle their personal accounts.

The latest example in date was Director General Dan Callikan’s ire that l’express announced that he had recruited Dev Virahsawmy to teach Creole to its staff. A decision that is being adversely commented within the MBC itself.

Now every reasonable person who feels rightly or wrongly aggrieved by an article would send a rejoinder for publication. Not the MBC. What do they do? Use the staff – they call themselves journalists – to settle their scores.

The MBC has of late, developed a new tool to settle scores; by showing photos of the people who have offended them and by crossing their faces away with a big red cross.

It’s no use wondering what the IBA Act says about this; neither the MBC nor the IBA cares. It’s no use wondering what viewers think of this method; the MBC doesn’t care. It’s no use wondering what the so-called journalists who accept to be part of this masquerade think of this, they have given up thinking.

It’s no use wondering what the Prime minister thinks of this method; by letting Dan Callikan get away with his fascist methods he is condoning this unacceptable behaviour.

And yet they say we’re a modern democracy where institutions are respected and the rule of law prevails. And they dare ask people to fund this propaganda machine that obeys no law, that respects no one, that flouts every single rule there is.