The PBS has sunk to new depths with Reno Bugeja, its head of news, now being accused of outright lying rather than the usual charges of selective and late reporting.

Reno Bugeja had taken over as head of news at PBS in the aftermath of the March 2013 general elections. At the time, the victorious Labour Party exposed its Robespierre streak. The rolling heads ranged from those of permanent secretaries, the Armed Forces Commander and his deputy, the Police Commissioner and countless other public sector officials.

The same fate was reserved to Dr Natalino Fenech the then-Head of News of the Public Broadcasting Services who was previously one of the Times of Malta’s best journalists. Nonetheless, and in spite of a number of achievements, Fenech was the victim of a systematic attack on his credibility and character assassination.

Lies, damned lies and PBS policies

With the “You might not vote for us but you can work with u” pre-election Labour mantra now abandoned, the ‘Billboard Meritocracy’, a travesty of meritocracy, was put in place even if at the time Reno Bugeja was seemingly one of the less dubious Tagħna Lkoll characters of all to be installed.

Reno Bugeja, who took over from Natalino Fenech as Head of News, was well respected, as he carried an aura of journalistic impartiality. So he came in as a man with a mission, entrusted to restore faith in PBS news by regaining credibility. Nothing could have been further from the truth. PBS keeps confirming that it has been reduced to a mere government propaganda tool. It seems to censure anything which does not fit neatly within Castile’s narrative. It does not matter whether it’s the Nationalist Party, former Labour leaders or the Archbishop of Malta.

In a reply to the Nationalist Party, Reno Bugeja has been caught lying about a supposed PBS policy regarding Facebook comments posted by high profile politicians.

Panamagate vs the martyrdom of Natius

Following a Nationalist Party press conference complaining about the selective reporting of the Panama Scandal, where the calls for resignation of Minister Konrad Mizzi by former Prime Minister Alfred Sant, Minister Evarist Bartolo and Government Whip Godfrey Farrugia were ignored by the public broadcaster, Reno Bugeja replied that, “in consistency with the PBS editorial guidelines, PBS does not report comments and opinions made on Facebook, whoever is writing them.”

This could have been just another stupid decision by PBS, for the medium here is irrelevant to the context and the substance of the matter. This was a cadre of senior politicians speaking their mind about an international scandal involving a Maltese minister. These people were not everybody else and the statements they made were definitely not a repetition of their already announced party line. So much so, that every other media outlet was reporting the comments bar the state broadcaster.

However, in barely 24 hours, Reno Bugeja’s lie was exposed. PBS reported a Facebook comment made by Żurrieq Mayor Ignatius Farrugia, who spent two hours in jail following a judge’s error.

It is not my intention to go into the merits of Mr Farrugia’s wrongful conviction or how he forced journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia to seek refuge in a Rabat convent. Neither will I go into the merits of how the government had every intention – no errors here – of putting Opposition MP Jason Azzopardi in jail. That is not the purpose of this article.

All I know is that Reno Bugeja, who pretends to be a beacon of impartiality, did not tell the truth when he said that PBS does not report Facebook comments. Maybe as Minister Bartolo has said, there is a law for the gods and another for the animals.

The Archbishop of Malta vs the Archbishop of Canterbury

In a similar incident, the Curia’s Public Relations Officer complained that the PBS newsroom failed to report the Archbishop of Malta’s concerns about the political climate in Malta following the revelation of the Panama Papers. While censoring and suppressing the most relevant views of the Archbishop of Malta relating to the developing local situation, PBS found it proper to report that the Archbishop of Canterbury, long suspecting that he was a love child, had finally discovered who his real father was. Simply bizarre!

Reno’s PBS vs The People

Let us not forget that the PBS Newsroom under Bugeja’s leadership has failed the public on numerous occasions: from the failure to report the Auditor General’s damning report about the Labour Government’s oil procurement from Azerbaijan, only to report it within the context of a government reply two days later, the outright disregard for Opposition MP’s press releases on scandals such as the Premier Café scandal, and to the shortcomings which it had been found guilty of in relation to the Panamagate among others.