PBS editor Sylvana Cristina has said the Investments Ministry has ordered “an imposed media blackout” on her, saying she can’t speak to the press unless she first goes through chief executive Joe Fenech Conti – the minister’s appointed chairman of the national station.
It’s all-out war at Television House in what is turning into a never-ending soap opera between PBS directors, its editorial board, the Broadcasting Authority, the Labour Party and Bondiplus presenter Lou Bondì.
Within a week, Bondì has earned the rebuke of the editorial board, the registered editor, the BA and Labour; but the PBS chairman overruled the editorial board yet again reversing its decision to allow the MLP a two-minute right of reply to be broadcast in tomorrow’s edition.
The last three days were absolute chaos as everyone involved in the skirmish churned out press releases and counter-reactions about past and future programmes to be held by Bondì.
The week started with MLP secretary-general Jason Micallef complaining to the editorial board about what he referred to as Bondì’s partisan bias against Labour after he faced deputy leader Charles Mangion with the costings of the Opposition’s budget proposals in last Monday’s programme.
The editorial board upheld the protest, allowing the party a two-minute reply to be broadcast tomorrow, but the board of directors informed Labour the decision was “null and void” as the protest letter was not addressed to Sylvana Cristina, who is registered editor and also sits on the editorial board.
Editorial board acting chairperson, Mary Anne Lauri, was quick to react to chairman Joe Fenech Conti: “Had the letter been addressed to Registered Editor in the first place, the Editor would have been duty bound to similarly circulate it to the Editorial Board members for their consideration,” she wrote. “The effect would have been the same. The important thing was that the Registered Editor was involved from the moment of receipt and that the position taken by the Editorial Board was consonant with the views of the Registered Editor. This means that your decision to declare the letter of the Editorial Board sent to the MLP as null and void is yet another attempt to render the work and responsibility of the Editorial Board useless.”
As if that were not enough, Lauri hit back at Fenech Conti’s track record of overruling the editorial board’s decisions.
“We note that once again the Board of Directors under your direction has made it a point to overrule yet again the decisions of the Editorial Board on a purely editorial issue,” she wrote. “By declaring the letter of the Editorial Board null and void on a dubious technicality, you are actively hampering the pursuit and maintenance of balance and impartiality in the National Broadcasting Station. The action of your Board and its implication to the constitutional responsibility of the station compels us to make the content of this letter public.”
A furious Jason Micallef sent the protest again to Cristina, stepping up the attack on PBS and Bondì.
“The chairman, Joe Fenech Conti, is unilaterally overruling everyone; it’s obscene, a glaring obscenity,” Micallef told MaltaToday yesterday. “Fenech Conti and chief executive Albert Debono are going out of their way to defend Lou Bondì, every week. Cristina is on the editorial board so their point of my letter being null and void is absurd.”
In fact, when last year Nationalist MP John Dalli complained about Bondiplus he sent his complaint to the editorial board, which upheld it.
“Nobody declared that decision null and void back then,” Micallef said.
Even more sinister was Cristina’s reference to “an imposed media blackout” when called yesterday evening.
“It’s a direct order from the ministry,” she said. “I can’t speak to the press and anything I say has to go through the chief executive.”
Despite being legally liable for editorial content on TVM, Cristina is even stopped from defending her decisions.
Later in the day however she released a statement saying she agreed with the editorial board’s decision granting a two-minute reply to Labour.
Bondì however defended his programme insisting he gave equal time to Mangion and Tonio Fenech last Monday, and hit back at the editorial board saying Mary Anne Lauri and Dominic Fenech were not “admirers of Bondiplus”.
Meanwhile the Broadcasting Authority also opened a broadside on the presenter after he changed the subject of his programme yet again. Instead of discussing Azzjoni Nazzjonali, tomorrow he will be discussing Michael Farrugia’s statement about Mater Dei and Prof. Albert Fenech’s reply slamming the Labour spokesman on health.
“From seven editions of the programme since the start of the schedule, the station has already made four requests to change the subjects, all of which were changed to subjects about political controversy… As already noted by the PBS editorial board on another occasion, a current affairs programme on public television shouldn’t have political controversy as their main focus, even more when there is already a heavy dose of such programmes on the political stations.”
Even more damning, however, was the BA’s statement in which it said “it is unclear for the authority how and who is taking the decisions on the subjects to be discussed on this programme, especially when one considers the fact that certain subjects are not being chosen in the most objective manner.”
The BA also reminded Bondì that his constitutional requirement to be impartial means adopting an impartial attitude during the whole programme.
Labour MP Michael Farrugia has already declared he will not participate in the programme.
“It is clear from the last few editions of this programme that it has a blatant partisan bias which definitely cannot be allowed to continue on the national broadcaster,” Farrugia said. “I refuse to participate in this programme. Nor do I intend to enter into polemics with the presenter; his partisan and self-publicitary intentions are now obvious to whoever is in his right mind.”

kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt