The Investments, Industry and IT Ministry and the Malta Labour Party yesterday exchanged strongly-worded statements on issues related to the Public Broadcasting Services, always made a political football by the two parties.
The Investments, Industry and IT Ministry accused Mr Micallef of waging a campaign of intimidation against the state broadcaster, where until a few months ago, the ministry said, Mr Micallef “was employed as a clerk”.
Among other accusations, the ministry also said that Mr Micallef was waging a crusade of hatred addressed personally against the PBS board, its management and some PBS employees whom Mr Micallef was trying to intimidate.
The ministry said the board, management and employees at PBS had turned a bankrupt company that was costing the country Lm2.2 million annually, into one which had the most popular stations, receiving Lm500,000 in subsidy each year. These facts, it said, did not please Mr Micallef because his party’s television station could not compare its results with PBS’s.
Mr Micallef wanted to intimidate PBS’ journalists and turn them against the Nationalist Party, and his repeated attacks were nothing but political interference in public broadcasting, and an anti-democratic and intimidatory attack. The government condemned the Labour Party for this behaviour, the ministry said.
The government, it added, had faith in the PBS board, management and employees, and the programme producers, and would not allow the Labour Party and Mr Micallef to use political intimidation to undermine the journalistic independence of the PBS. It also urged the General Workers’ Union to not allow anyone to sully and threaten its members.
The Labour Party in turn said that Dr Gatt had maintained his campaign of cheap insults and personal attacks. With his high-strung intolerance against his political adversaries, Dr Gatt was increasingly becoming “a threat to democracy”.
After his “vulgar criticism” of Labour leader Alfred Sant at the PN general council, his target now was party general secretary Jason Micallef. Dr Gatt’s statement was supposed to be a reply to Mr Micallef’s factual criticism earlier this week about the situation at PBS but was in fact full of lies, the MLP charged.
It said that one of the points Mr Micallef had made was that PBS employees were demoralised, no matter what political party they believed in. Mr Micallef also said that the PBS newsroom journalists were not being allowed to put up current affairs programmes and added that the MLP trusted all PBS’ employees. At no point was there any criticism of the employees, the MLP said.
In his criticisms, it added, Dr Gatt had failed to reply to the charge of manipulation of PBS’ programmes, which were controlled by chairman Joe Fenech Conti and executive head Albert Debono. Neither had he said anything about PBS’ violations of directives issued by the Broadcasting Authority, for which the company was being fined thousands of liri.
The facts were, the MLP said, that under Dr Gatt there had been a record of resignations at PBS – three chairmen of the board of directors, and two chairmen of the editorial board had resigned. The latest to resign as editorial board chairman was John Camilleri, former private secretary to then Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami, who said when he resigned that PBS was today in a miserable state.