There is nothing wrong if journalists conducting TV shows on the national station ask tough questions to the Opposition Leader when he is invited for an interview. They are doing their job when they put him on the spot, like any other media with no links to the Nationalist Party should do.

What is wrong is when the same journalists act very differently when they have the Prime Minister in the studio, throwing soft-ball questions and never trying to put him against the ropes. When they treat the PM very gently and carefully, then PBS journalists are not doing their job properly.

The Public Broadcasting Services missed this important point when it issued a statement after a complaint was filed by the Nationalist Party after an interview with Bernard Grech during the programme Insights.

The PN, in its letter to the BA, compared the style and type of questions levelled by the presenter to Grech with what had happened the week before, when PM Robert Abela was guest during the same programme. It in this sense, the PN said, that the presenter acted “in a discriminatory and prejudicial” way against the Opposition Leader.

In its reply, the PBS said that the journalist had acted “professionally and impartially” and defended the right of journalists to ask pertinent questions. Yes, dear PBS, journalists should be asking those questions – but not only to the Opposition Leader, but also to the Prime Minister.

The PN made it a point to say, in a statement accompanying the letter it sent to the BA, that it saw “no issue to have its leader facing difficult questions”. What was not acceptable is that the Prime Minister was caressed with silk gloves by the presented, who then hit Grech with knuckle-dusters, the PN said.

This is where the crux of the complaint is. As a national station which is paid for by the whole population – Labourites, Nationalists and all in between and beyond – PBS has a duty to not make a distinction between the two.

Now, we all know that over the course of history, PBS and its predecessors always tended to favour the party in government. The party in opposition found reason to complain about the way it was treated on several occasions, and even in times when the BA ruled against it, very often the protests were justified.

Before this latest complaint, the PN in early January had for example filed a protest because PBS did not report the testimony given by former Prime Minister Joseph Muscat in the case filed by Adrian Delia on the deal the government signed for the transfer of three public hospitals. That’s one example in which PBS acted as a gate-keeper for the government.

PBS journalists should understand that their salaries are paid by the people and that, as such, they are supposed to be independent journalists.

In a nutshell, PBS journalists must act as if they were Net TV journalists when interviewing the Prime Minister, and One TV journalists when they are interviewing the Opposition Leader. Perhaps without being aggressive and without interrupting too much, as often is the case with journalists employed with party media.