I worked with Natalino Fenech for quite a number of years when he was news editor at The Malta Independent between 1992 and 1997. There were several occasions when we did not see eye to eye and we regularly clashed on the meaning of news, but I must say that I always respected his style of management.

Since he took over the reins of the PBS newsroom just before the last general election, the quality of news productions on the national station has improved. The 8pm bulletin is no longer the notice-board it used to be, and provides viewers with stories other than those off the DOI list of events.

My only suggestion here is that each time PBS journalists lift a story from one of the newspapers, they should give credit where it is due, not make it seem as if they were the ones who discovered it. Yet, this is apparently a widespread hobby in local journalism, especially in The Times, which often carries front page stories when the story would have been broken by another newspaper.

But the scope of my article is not this form of plagiarism, a matter which local journalist bodies have conveniently never addressed – and this is one of the many reasons why I believe that they are organisations not worthy of my membership.

What pushed me into putting pen to paper is the appalling service that PBS gives its many viewers on sports events, a matter that Mr Fenech has apparently not found time to tackle in the 18 months he has been responsible for the PBS newsroom.

In a day and age when technology and communications have made so much progress, it is sad to have a national television station that is so late with its sports results and news.

We are talking about a TV service, one which has to be immediate and fast. It is not a newspaper, which has its printing deadlines, and needs to be “closed” at a certain time, sometimes leaving out late news and obviously not reporting anything that takes place late into the night.

A TV station must always be ready to report things “as they happen”, and it has the advantage of being “open” on a 24-hour basis. Yet, this advantage is being lost by PBS when it comes to sports news.

Let me give a few examples. Last Friday, Hibernians won the Euro Cup. The game finished at about 11pm yet, by 7am the next day, PBS was not in a position to give the “news” to its viewers that the Paolites had won the first competition of the 2009-2010 football season – something that was in all newspapers, in spite of their printing deadlines.

All we had was a caption with the result of the match – which the newscaster, Chris Cauchi, did not read out but told viewers to see on screen. This means that he was not in the studio to give the result of the match, and obviously, since he recorded his piece long before the match ended, could not tell the viewers that Hibs had won the cup. So the viewers who were waiting to know who the competition winners were ended up disappointed – and this eight hours after the match had finished.

Such a scenario happens during winter too, especially when there are late football games, particularly those of the Champions League. The sports newscaster tells viewers to read the results on the screen – which means that there are no comments on the matches played and no scorers given. Is this how things should be done? Can this be called a professional way of doing journalism?

There are other occasions when sports news services on PBS leave much to be desired. For instance, it is happening regularly that the results of the national waterpolo league being played at Tal-Qroqq are not given. Chris Cauchi – him again, but he seems to be the one who is regularly on duty on Fridays – completely ignores the game, in spite of being only a phone call away from getting to know the results and giving them to the viewers.

A reader of this newspaper recently sent in a letter to complain about this, sarcastically asking whether PBS knows about the existence of mobile phones. He’s right. Unless it’s something on wheels, Mr Cauchi is never on the ball when it comes to other sport events.

But it’s not only Mr Cauchi who should pull up his socks. Other sports contributors often concentrate on sports news that has little following in Malta – such as the football leagues in South America, and even here, the news is given three days late – while disregarding items that have much more significance to local sports enthusiasts.

I know for a fact that Mr Fenech is not into sports, and this is perhaps why he does not realise the shortcomings of this sector. Well, now he has been told, and I do hope that he will find the time to sort things out. If his managerial skills are not enough, then I wonder who can solve this problem.

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