Lou Bondì has yet again been stopped from holding a programme on the budget on TVM, after changing the topic for tomorrow’s programme at the eleventh hour.
This will be the second consecutive week that Bondiplus is being ordered to keep its distance from the budget, after the station instructed the PBS newsroom to produce the budget analysis last week instead of Bondì’s programme.
According to a Broadcasting Authority ruling handed yesterday, Bondì will also have to steer clear of the budget tomorrow and stick to a programme about Azzjoni Nazzjonali, as originally planned.
The authority intervened after the Labour Party secretary general Jason Micallef complained on Friday evening upon learning that Bondì was about to hold his programme shortly after Alfred Sant’s budget speech in Parliament tomorrow.
Lou Bondì asked Micallef to send an MLP representative to the programme, that would have also had junior finance minister Tonio Fenech in the studio discussing Sant’s parliamentary speech.
“This is unacceptable and unprecedented,” Micallef said. “Government has its chance to answer Sant’s reply in parliament on Wednesday, yet Bondì wants to hand over the reply to Tonio Fenech exactly after Sant finishes his speech. The broadcasting law is being breached all the time on the national station’s current affairs programmes as never before.”
Micallef added: “The BA also has a list of subjects that Bondì will be tackling every week, and this was not the agreed subject for Monday. He has already earned the station a Lm2,000 suspended fine for changing the subject without informing the BA two weeks ago, and he was going to do it again.”
In fact, last Friday the BA issued its ruling against PBS as it had failed to inform the authority that Bondì had changed a programme that was meant to discuss life after death, but ended up discussing the PN General Council, against the BA’s directive which orders the national broadcaster to inform it of current affairs topics beforehand.
The station was fined Lm2,000 suspended for a year, with the possibility of the fine going up to Lm15,000 if the infringement is repeated.
The irony behind the BA’s order is that it confirms a previous ruling by the PBS editorial board, which had instructed Bondì to stick to his original subject, Azzjoni Nazzjonali, after the presenter made it known he was changing the topic to the budget.
But the PBS editorial board was overruled by the PBS chairman Joe Fenech Conti, who had given Bondì the green light to go ahead with his budget programme against the editorial board’s decision.
“The budget has already been well covered, we have an overdose of the budget, and Bondiplus is turning into a schedule of political broadcasts,” said the Acting Editorial Board chairman Dominic Fenech.
“This is our editorial prerogative, but yet again, the PBS chairman has intervened to overrule our decision, making a whole farce out of the broadcasting policy. The chairman is actually accelerating the process of decadence here. He just can’t accept a decision taken by the editorial board with which he disagrees, so his solution is to just overrule it and nullify it. It’s become the order of the day now.
“As editorial board we are also concerned that Bondiplus is ending up as a meeting place of talking heads, instead of doing the investigative journalism it claims to do,” Fenech said.
About last Friday’s fine, BA chairman Joseph Scicluna said the authority had TVM’s current affairs subjects a month in advance and expected the station to inform it of any changes up to 24 hours before the programme is broadcast.
“We’re enforcing this rule because we’re in a pre-electoral period and we have to ensure that there is balance over a long period of time,” Scicluna said when contacted.
“Eventually we’ll apply it to all stations much more comprehensively, when the election date is announced.”
The BA imposed a Lm2,000 fine suspended for a year, given it was the first time TVM had breached the rule, with the warning that if the same directive were to be breached again, the fine could go up to Lm15,000.
The BA chairman said the fines were not disproportionate given that this was a specific directive.
“We have to make sure our directives are followed and we’re determined about this,” Scicluna said.
He added the authority has always been reasonable with the station.
“If an emergency happens, like the death of a public figure, of course we would expect a change in programme, but we’re just a phone call away.”