Evarist Bartolo | Sunday, 29 March 2009

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PBS betraying its mission

The PN government continues to use our national broadcaster – Public Broadcasting Services (PBS) – as its mouthpiece. PBS is being run in a way that betrays the nice words contained in its mission statement inspiring the national broadcasting policy published five years ago: “PBS serves the general public as well as particular segments of the population by striving to be the most creative, inclusive, professional and trusted broadcaster in Malta.”
But as this interesting policy document states in its conclusion: “Outcomes and results do not depend on documents but on people. No matter how good this document may be, its detailed execution is the result of daily decisions taken by a myriad of people who will be executing it one way or the other within PBS. The real challenge is not to write this document but to harness its spirit when executing it.” [sic]
The people who are responsible for running PBS and its newsroom have all been appointed by the PN and their track record shows why the PN has appointed them to these sensitive posts. Both the chairman of the editorial board, Dr Joe Pirotta, and the head of news, Dr Natalino Fenech, are failing in their duties to carry out the task set by the April 2004 National Broadcasting Policy: “it is only PBS that can guarantee news and current affairs programmes presented in a balanced and impartial way solely based on news value criteria.”
This is not happening and consistently news and current affairs programmes are mostly shaped to fit in with the PN agenda. Five years ago the policy document recommended: “Steps have also to be taken so that PBS will be more and more looked at as the national broadcaster, that is the broadcaster that will represent and fairly treat different views and values present in our society.”
The opposite has happened. Persons have been appointed to sensitive PBS posts as if they were being appointed to PN posts, with total disregard of the Constitution and laws and regulations governing public sector recruitment. On the eve of the last general election the PN appointed Dr Natalino Fenech to head the PBS newsroom without any public call. He got preferential treatment not only in the method of recruitment, but also in his work conditions as he was given a generous €46,000 annual package. He is certainly not in a position to bite the hand that feeds him, and the hand that put him in his post without having to compete with others in merit. No wonder that he runs the PBS news section as if he is in charge of the newsroom of NET TV!
He has very badly damaged his professional integrity. As a national broadcaster he has Constitutional obligations to ensure the principle of impartiality in respect of matters of political or industrial controversy. These principles have to be respected by PBS at all times. Dr Fenech is running the news section in line with the agenda of the PN government. The Opposition and the rest of civil society are treated as second class citizens and treated unfairly in the news coverage and most of the current affairs programmes. Views and voices that are deemed uncomfortable for the PN government are either suppressed or granted only a feeble presence if not completely ignored.
With the exception of Dissett, current affairs programmes outsourced to Where’s Everybody? are seen as biased in favour of the PN government agenda. These outsourced programmes are breaking the European directive that states clearly that news and current affair programmes cannot be sponsored, so as not to be conditioned.
Since colonial days, our national broadcasting station has always been a subtle and at times a crude propaganda set-up for the government. Since independence 45 years ago both Labour and Nationalist governments have used it for their own partisan ends. If public broadcasting is to have a future, and it must have a future as it is an essential infrastructure for a more democratic and open society, it will have to change. We must take steps to liberate the PBS from government control, stop it from being crucified between the two major political parties and allow it to flourish as a national vigorous democratic space for the diversity that exists within our civil society.
The internet and other new communications technologies are making traditional media like TV, newspapers and radio obsolete and irrelevant for larger sections of the population. So far, PBS’s presence on the internet is pathetic and it must move in the direction of becoming a web portal with interactive and convergent technology if it is to have a future.

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