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Himself criticised by the Archbishop for having accepted the post of Chairman of the PBS Editorial Board, Fr Joe Borg tells Karl Schembri why he believes in Austin Gatt’s restructuring plan for the national broadcasting company 
The newly-appointed Chairman of the PBS editorial board, Fr Joe Borg, does not think twice before absolving Investments Minister Austin Gatt of the grievous sin of dismantling the national television station.
In fact, it looks more as if Fr Borg is on the confessional end, declaring his new credo in the man who has been lambasted by many for his insensitive, narrow-minded and debilitating restructuring process at Malta’s public service broadcasting company.
Gatt is the minister who took over PBS in his portfolio, not as culture or education minister, but as the man entrusted with cost-cutting, restructuring and privatisation, putting the national public service broadcaster on the same footing as the dry-docks and the Freeport terminal. His PBS restructuring plan includes the closing down of FM Bronja and Channel 12, and cutting staff down from 180 workers to a mere 60, although the hasty process is already showing signs of bad planning that will inevitably lead to some deadlines being postponed.
Gatt is the same minister who said PBS could become like the two party stations, and also went on record saying that we could do away with PBS, doing away with any hint of public service obligations.
Fr Borg, a media expert in his own right, defends all of Gatt’s decisions. Of course, he has seen too many reports being commissioned and shelved, seminars discussing a new public service broadcaster, ministers launching consultations that lead nowhere. Gatt is the minister who took action, and Fr Borg is his advisor.
I tell him the suspicions many sceptics have about the restructuring is that this is a process that will only benefit the two major political parties. Dismantling PBS would mean there will be virtually nobody to scrutinise the government and opposition at the national broadcaster’s newsroom, nobody to broadcast balanced fair yet incisive affairs programmes, while the two parties themselves will have their own television stations strengthened.
“I say, in the most categorical of ways, that I don’t believe this is the case,” Fr Borg says. “I don’t believe this was the intention behind the reform, or that it will be the consequence of this process once it’s concluded. Neither Chairman Michael Mallia nor would I have accepted this difficult job if we had only a suspicion that there was this intention or that things will end up the way you’re saying. I can’t even understand why one should make that argument. It’s not even true that PBS is being dismantled. Actually, one of the reasons why I believe restructuring will work this time round is because of the dynamic presence of Austin Gatt and Michael Mallia.”
One reason to make that argument is the figures. Stripping PBS of two-thirds of its workers is indicative. In effect this means that PBS will be producing next to nothing – only news and maybe some current affairs programmes. Even sports will be farmed out.
“You should look at how restructuring will change the way programmes are made,” Fr Borg says. “An amount of programmes that used to be produced in-house will now be farmed out. This is already the situation with radio stations – the majority of radio programmes are not produced by full-timers but by stringers, freelancers and independent production houses. There is a very valid argument which says that creativity has a limited shelf life, so you don’t need to employ creative people on a full-time basis. I don’t believe that at the end of the process we’re going to have a worse station. We’ll be learning from experience but the structure is an innovative one.”
He invites critics to “look at the Public Service Obligation Contract” – a new document emerging out of Gatt’s plans which holds the company accountable for the funds it gets from the state.
“It’s the first time we have such a contract. To me that’s very positive,” he says.
For the first year, the government is budgeting only Lm500,000 for the PBS programmes, despite the fact that the station will now be heavily reliant on outside productions.
“That’s the amount for this year. It might increase or decrease next year. The company will have to make its case. This is also the first time that there is going to be a distinction between editorial content and other aspects. The editorial board is responsible for content according to set criteria, while others will look at the financial side.”
Who will have the final say?
“The board which runs PBS is the board of directors, we won’t have two boards running it. The other board is a new creature and will be dealing specifically with editorial content. When it comes to news it has the last say, within the parameters laid out in the general policy; when it comes to programmes the board looks at proposals, it gives its advice about the best programmes proposed and forwards a shortlist to the board of directors. Then it’s up to the directors to consider them from the financial aspect, but the two boards are working perfectly together.”
He says this is the first time PBS issued a Programme Statement of Intent which should ensure a transparent selection process when it comes to programmes.
“We have bound ourselves to tell applicants whose programmes we refuse the reasons why we refused their offer. Now you know well enough that whenever a student fails a test, he will never say the examiner was correct in his assessment but that, on the contrary, the examiner was wrong; and you also know that in the media, egos are not very deflated, so whoever is going to be told that his offer wasn’t accepted because of editorial reasons or because of financial considerations, he is going to start spreading a lot of rumours and say a lot of things and paroli. That’s how things are here in Malta. Still, we committed ourselves to declare to every applicant whose application is refused the reasons why we refused his offer. It’s an enormous task that will take a lot of our time, because we’ve had so many offers.”
He says the company received some 170 proposals for television programmes from more than 40 production houses, some of which he says, “I’ve never heard of before”.
Was it his idea to scrap FM Bronja?
“Let’s say policies are policies. To say it was that person’s idea or the other’s … In my opinion it was the right decision. I’m not here to speak on behalf of the government but the policy document says that government wanted two radio stations. Now government doesn’t have only the three PBS radio stations. It also owns, indirectly, the university radio station – that is also funded by government. So the government’s argument is, do we need two niche educational and cultural stations, or is it enough to have one? We’re talking about an audience of a maximum of 3,000 listeners, not more.”
He says the ongoing restructuring process is “like when you’re painting all your house”.
“If you come inside my house at when there’s paint all over the place
you’ll think I’m crazy, living in such a disaster. It’s a period that we have to go through, and it might be that there will be some short-term issues, but we’re going through a learning curve and things will adjust themselves.
“Look, in the last years, the programmes that fall under the category of public service obligation programmes amounted to around 50 per cent. The new policy document states that these have to remain at 50 per cent.”
With a new editorial board chaired by Fr Borg, perhaps one might expect that those 50 per cent of public service programmes will be of a better quality, right?
“That’s the target, of course. In fact we’ll be organising two seminars: one for those involved in production and in the creative editorial aspect, the other for those involved in advertising, to tell what the PBS standards are going to be.”
And he’s convinced that with a newsroom of six journalists and two coordinators PBS will have a decent 8 o’ clock news of high journalistic standards, right?
“Well the way the newsroom is structured means that you’ll have five full-time journalists everyday. The document also says that nothing is cast in stone. It doesn’t exclude stringers and part-timers. One has to play by ear.”
What’s Fr Borg’s benchmark of a good news bulletin of a public service broadcaster?
“I believe the people are not stupid. We have three television stations producing news. TVM has 90,000 to 100,000 viewers, while the other two combined have an audience slightly higher than that of TVM. So the people are already saying TVM is better.”
They might be seeing it as the least bad of all three.
“Yes, of course, but we’re not talking about a disaster here. We’ve just been through an electoral campaign; the amount of items we had in the news that were related to party activities amounted to 13 per cent… I’m sure you would have thought we had more. It was a conscious decision to limit ourselves to items of intrinsic value while relegating coverage party activities – which previously used to be first items – towards the end of the bulletin, in one ‘package’. That’s a positive step.”
There was still no analysis of the campaigns.
“Analysis shouldn’t be in the news…”
Questioning politicians, challenging them when they commit blunders …
“Yes but don’t forget that because we put some questions in one of our bulletins about (former) Minister John Dalli we also were criticised.”
By Dalli himself.
“Yes, by Dalli. I believe that, in general PBS used to have too much ‘respect’ towards politicians. Now the brief we have from government is that we are there in the public’s service, and our journalists should ask the public’s questions. So we should have more questioning, of all politicians of course, and not just politicians because they’re not the only power in the country. Businessmen also have power. We discuss a lot about the PBS news, fine, but how much discussion do you see in the media about the media? You don’t find any.”
I tell him that part of the problem lies in the fact that there isn’t a credible, independent platform that is ready to scrutinise the media in a fair and transparent way. The Press Club remains silent and university isn’t contributing much.
“Every medium has its biases and policies, and commercially-driven media have as much of a political agenda as party media. They don’t have a partisan agenda, because if I’m a businessman and I own a medium, my first item on the agenda is to make profits. There’s nothing wrong with that, but one has to ask: how will my agenda to make profits affect my editorial content? I think it is pretty clear what my editorial decision would be if I had to decide between an item that would maximise my profits and an item that would affect negatively my business interests. What I’m saying is that we don’t have a forum where we can discuss these issues.”
He says the media scenario, dominated as it is by the two political stations and with institutional newspapers (parties, unions and the Church), reflects quite well the society’s structure.
“We live in a society where institutions are important. What I’m against is the fact that political parties were not bold enough and far-sighted to realise that using news as propaganda might give them an advantage in the short-term but in the long-term will make the people distrust them. I think this is just a phase in which institutions own the media. It will do them a lot of harm, in the long-term, if all of the institutions don’t realise that it’s stupid to use your media for the sake of the institution instead of in the service of their audiences. If they keep going on like this they are going to suffer a lot.”
I borrow Karmenu Mifsud Bonnici’s historical objection to granting TV licences to parties: Why would a party invest in the media if not to maximise its propaganda, irrespective of whether it is subtle or blatant?
“That’s why during the debate on pluralism I had proposed adopting the Dutch model. In the Dutch model you have clubs representing political parties, churches, unions, etc, and depending on the number of members in your club you will be given a certain amount of air time on a frequency.
“What I’m saying is that either institutions are going to see the light and change their way of doing television, or else they’re going to have problems.”
Shifting the argument back to the editorial board, Fr Borg says: “We will farm out the programmes but not editorial prerogative. Whoever produces a programme is interested only in his programme, while the company’s editorial board has the audience’s interests in its remit.”
I ask him how rigorous the board is going to be when it comes to vetting editorial content. Last year, for example, Labour MP Adrian Vassallo had said in Parliament that the BondiPlus programme which broadcast footage of a satanic mass had to be investigated, suggesting that it was a fake.
“Look, I’m sure that if Adrian Vassallo or anyone else went to PBS saying ‘I have these reasons to suspect…’ it would have been investigated.”
Vassallo went to Parliament…
“Sorry but are you saying that whatever is said in parliament ... I mean haven’t you heard the rumours about a high-ranking police officer who is being investigated?”
Nobody mentioned them in parliament.
“They were worse because the rumours were so widespread. I’ve been hearing so many rumours about PBS, about who’s becoming news manager …”
Indeed, it turns out it’s quite a problem to fill the post of news manager, isn’t it?
“Yes – it reflects the level of journalism in Malta. I mean isn’t it a challenge for you as a journalist to be in charge of a news bulletin with an audience of 100,000?”
It could be that potential applicants believe they cannot do a good job with five journalists.
“I don’t think that’s the main issue, no.”
What’s the main issue then?
“The main issue is that journalists know this is a very hot seat, and it is always difficult to change if you already have your corner in another newsroom. I don’t think many journalists are up to this challenge.”
The news manager, who will also be registered editor, won’t even have a vote on the editorial board, even though he is legally liable for content, but Fr Borg says that is not an issue either.
“Before, you had the chief executive as registered editor and editorial decisions were taken by the board of directors. The chief executive never had a vote. From now on, the registered editor, who will be the news manager, will be able to attend editorial board meetings as a member of the votes. You say he has no vote, but I don’t believe the relationship between the board and the editor shouldn’t be based on votes, in fact so far we have always been unanimous in the decisions we’ve taken so far.”
While that might have been the case within the new PBS hierarchy, things were quite different for Fr Borg within the Church. In fact, he defiantly accepted the post of chairman of the editorial board, despite the Archbishop’s public admonition.
“The fact that the Archbishop and I didn’t agree in our analysis hurts me and saddens me a lot. I have no doubt that he reached that conclusion because of objective reasons, but I think his analysis was wrong. In my analysis I reached a different conclusion. But I already said that I compare the archbishop to my father. We might disagree on one point…”
He’s not his father, he’s his superior within a strict and official hierarchy.
“Our relationship is not only juridical, I’m sorry, that’s why it hurts and why I’m so disturbed by all this. It’s not like your professional, juridical relationship with your editor or your employer. My relationship with the archbishop is not just that, it’s much more than that, it’s primarily sacramental. That’s why I feel hurt everyday about it. But it doesn’t mean we can’t stand each other.”
Did he discuss the issue again with Mgr Mercieca since the fallout?
“About the case no, but I have a very good relationship with the Archbishop and Curia officials.”
Friction with the archbishop is not new to Fr Borg. Already in 2000 his sudden resignation from Chairman of the Church-owned Media Centre and RTK radio had led to much speculation about the possible motives behind it. Until today it is still unclear whether he was forced to resign by the Archbishop, whether there was any pressure from the Labour Party to kick him out…
“And you think that if it’s been unclear until today I’m going to clarify anything now? I have no doubt that whenever the archbishop makes a decision, in his conscience he would have felt that he couldn’t make a different decision. I’m not saying I agree with it, but I’m sure he doesn’t base a decision on pressure from someone else. I have no doubt at all about that.”
He rubbishes my last question with a loud laugh when I ask him whether he ever considered leaving the priesthood because of the archbishop’s decisions related to his media career.
“No, no, no … I don’t even consider the media next to priesthood, it’s out of the question. It’s nothing next to priesthood.”
But he’s still defying the archbishop. He’s disobeying Mgr Mercieca’s orders.
“I would say that in this case, when you consider the issue in itself, the lack of agreement between us is not a disaster. I have a very good relationship with the Archbishop.”
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