The Labour Party’s secretary-general yesterday expressed the party’s concern that current affairs programmes on the national television station were being manipulated in favour of the Nationalist Party and against the opposition.
MLP secretary-general Jason Micallef was addressing journalists outside the premises of the Broadcasting Authority in Hamrun, following a meeting that a Labour delegation had with the authority’s chairman and executive director.
He expressed the MLP’s full confidence in all Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) employees, but said it was unacceptable that members of the station’s newsroom were not being allowed to produce current affairs programmes.
Mr Micallef said it was unacceptable that in the run-up to a general election, current affairs programmes were manipulated in an outright manner in favour of the Nationalist Party; he said certain programmes were being changed at the last moment for this purpose.
He accused Investment, Industry and IT Minister Austin Gatt of being incapable of bringing the national TV station’s editorial board and the board of directors – which he himself had created – to work together.
The PBS editorial board’s former chairman, John Camilleri, who used to be President Eddie Fenech Adami’s private secretary when the latter was Prime Minister, had described the state of national broadcasting as “miserable”, said Mr Micallef.
Mr Micallef said it appeared that the Nationalist Party was quite happy with the situation, possibly since it had a strong hold over the PBS chairman and the executive director, whom the Labour Party did not trust.
He said the Labour Party would be doing all it possibly could to ensure the transmission of balanced content on the national TV station, as specified in the Constitution.
The MLP wanted to safeguard both its own interests, as well as those of the national TV station’s audience, said Mr Micallef
Claiming that PBS employees were demoralised, the MLP secretary-general assured them that should the Labour Party be elected to government, it would do all it possibly could to ensure that whoever was talented would be given the opportunity to produce quality programmes.
He thanked the Broadcasting Authority’s chairman and executive director for understanding the Labour Party’s concerns and said he hoped that it would actually be members of the PBS newsroom who would conduct this year’s post-budget political debates.
The MLP’s spokesman for public broadcasting, Helena Dalli referred to PBS as the Nationalist Party’s second television station and questioned the editorial board’s real role at the station.
She said presenters of current affairs programmes on PBS were not ashamed of strongly expressing their ideas against the MLP, but these same people then expected to be considered as unbiased.