Letters | Wednesday, 24 December 2008

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

PBS’s guests on Dissett

Reference is made to Saviour Balzan’s article ‘What do the Khmer Rouge and Maltapost have to do with each other?’ (3 December), Mr Balzan’s open letter to me of 7 December and the story in ‘PBS bypasses MaltaToday over tuna controversy’ (10 December).
First of all I would like to thank Mr Balzan for the praise he showered on my value judgements. Coming from a person who is so critical of everyone else, I really appreciate it that he acknowledged the work I have been doing at PBS. He is not the only one to realise this and the fact that we practically doubled our news audiences also shows that we are doing something right.
What MaltaToday said about the PBS newsroom contacting The Times’ newsroom to take part in Dissett which dealt with the tuna industry, is completely untrue. The Dissett team contacted a Greenpeace activist who informed us she was now working for the Sunday Times and hence could not take part.
Mr Balzan is correct in saying we made it a point not to ask MaltaToday for its comments about the tuna issue. The reason why we did this is a very simple one that can be found in Mr Balzan’s own admission in the apology he made to Albert Mizzi on 29 June this year.
In that apology, Mr Balzan admitted to orchestrating a campaign by writing over 40 articles with reference to Mr Mizzi, four of which were libellous, “subjecting Mr Mizzi to a sustained and unwarranted personal attack, which was entirely unjustified and unfair.”
Mr Balzan proudly proclaims that the paper for which he is responsible is facing 10 libel cases after publishing 52 articles about the tuna industry. Seeing Mr Balzan’s admission about his campaign against Mr Mizzi, one does not have to be a genius to understand why the national television station chose to seek the opinion of experts, rather than the opinion of MaltaToday.

Natalino Fenech
Head of News, PBS

Editorial Note - Further to the PBS coverage on this matter, this letter has been published within the time limit set by the Press Act
See Saviour Balzan

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.