The Broadcasting Authority has refused to block further continued discussion on the controversy created last week by Opposition spokesman Michael Farrugia’s criticism of the first day of cardiac operations at Mater Dei Hospital.

It decided yesterday not to block tomorrow’s Bondiplus discussion of the same notwithstanding the fact that Dr Farrugia will not be present.

The authority had already blocked a Bondiplus debate some days ago when Labour leader Alfred Sant refused to participate, although he had been on the very same programme in a direct debate with the Prime Minister only a few weeks earlier.

In preparation for yesterday’s Broadcasting Authority board meeting, the Labour media made much of a decision reached by the PBS editorial board to offer “remedy” to the Labour Party with a two-minute spot on tomorrow’s programme to explain Labour proposals regarding finances which, the PBS editorial board felt, were not given enough importance in last Monday’s programme.

The Labour media said Mr Bondi was “guilty” of unbalanced hosting of the programme.

The PBS board of directors subsequently overruled this decision.

The present hyper-charged pre-electoral period is seeing a concerted attack by Labour on any media coverage that is not to its liking or tame enough to be anodyne. Although there is much to be said about the way certain broadcasters go about their job and choice of subjects for their current affairs programmes, Labour is again verging on the media boycott that so hurt its chances in 2003.

A case in point is Bondiplus that has become the focus of Labour attacks practically week after week, culminating in the Broadcasting Authority decision to block a discussion on the Labour reply to the Budget and its attempt to block tomorrow’s edition.

This has become like a football game where the goalposts are continually being moved, usually depending on whether Labour feels comfortable or less so with the subject under discussion. According to this interpretation, Labour felt comfortable with Dr Sant facing up to Dr Gonzi, so the programme went ahead and, also through Labour spin, was made to appear that Dr Sant had triumphed.

Labour was then not so happy with facing up to confrontation and debate as regards its reply to the Budget, so its appeal to the Broadcasting Authority to block that programme was accepted.

But it was the opposition to tomorrow’s programme that fully revealed the strategy. It is widely felt that Michael Farrugia’s claims that the first heart operations at Mater Dei were risky and did not protect the interests of the patients, subsequently shot down by surgeon Albert Fenech in no oblique way, was yet another slip-up by Dr Farrugia and the party.

In his second statement last week, Dr Farrugia claimed that he had said what he had to say and, “in the interests of the patients” did not see any need for further public discussion. He then announced he would not appear on Bondiplus.

But even while, somewhat grudgingly, it was allowing the programme to go on, “because in this case there are no exceptional circumstances”, the Broadcasting Authority made certain statements which are making many people ask whether the authority is sufficiently clear-minded in its defence of freedom of expression.

In its statement yesterday, the authority quotes with evident approval what the PBS editorial board said some time ago: “A current events programme on the public station must not principally focus on subjects of political controversy, especially since there is already a high dose of such programmes on the political stations.”

This somewhat convoluted statement is leading some to ask if the authority and the PBS editorial board mean to say that political controversy should be left to the political stations with the public station being relegated to anodyne, mostly foreign, news.

One often repeated charge with regard to the Broadcasting Authority is that it is soft with the propaganda and worse mayhem that goes on the political party stations but comes down like a brick on the non-political ones. With its four members coming from the two parties, that is somewhat hard to avoid.

In yesterday’s statement, the Broadcasting Authority could barely hide its distaste at yet another programme change by Bondiplus – the fourth in seven programmes so far – and it surrounded its allowing the programme to go on with lists of severely drafted statements urging and enforcing the presenter’s “impartial attitude”.

But even the authority with all its shibboleths and conditions will not impede, in tomorrow’s programme, the Medical Association of Malta secretary Martin Balzan saying it is not ethical for a doctor to comment on another doctor and that anybody who has a complaint should go to the right quarters rather than make political mileage out of it. Dr Balzan also states that the patients did well after their operation.