Lashing out at TV presenter Lou Bondì for his “impossibility of ever being impartial with Labour”, MLP secretary general Jason Micallef yesterday defended his party’s decision to veto last Monday’s Bondiplus.
Micallef complained to the Broadcasting Authority last Friday, urging the television watchdog to intervene and stop Bondì from holding an analysis of Alfred Sant’s budget reply, despite deputy leader Charles Mangion’s earlier confirmation that he would attend for the programme.
The authority ordered the presenter not to go ahead with the programme, unleashing his outrage at the power granted by the BA to the opposition in getting a programme scrapped just by virtue pulling out of a programme.
“This is unheard of,” Bondì said on his programme last Monday, hitting out at the BA and comparing it to an authority straight from Zimbabwe in what he described as a protest programme. “Now all a party has to do to stop a programme is to pull out.”
“With the blessing of Joe Fenech Conti and Albert Debono, Bondì has made the station his own, criticising the BA as he feels like and expecting everyone to play to his tune,” Micallef said.
“Whether he likes it or not, Bondì knows he has to invite Labour officials through me or (media executive) Mark Farrugia. He can’t call any Tom, Dick and Harry to go on his programme and expect them to be there; it could be Alfred Sant for that matter. He knows how things are done, and he knows we never had a problem sending our representatives.”
When contacted, Mangion would not be drawn into whether he had accepted to appear on Bondiplus before Micallef’s intervention.
“That is irrelevant, now that the BA has ruled that Bondì cannot hold a balance programme on the issue,” Mangion said. “If the BA says Bondiplus cannot be balanced, I won’t be the one to go on it. It’s not the first time I went on the programme, but I can’t go if there’s such an issue with the BA and the party.”
Called yesterday, Bondì blamed MaltaToday for adding “a sinister twist to an already perverted media scene”. He repeated, however, that Mangion had already confirmed his participation on the programme and said Micallef’s claim that a programme analysing Sant’s budget speech would have violated the broadcasting law “should make it to the Guinness Book of Records as the most perverse interpretation of the Broadcasting Act”.
Bondì also asked how come MaltaToday did not find it odd that MLP was objecting to a whole Bondiplus programme on the party’s own leader’s speech.
Micallef replied: “Our objection is towards Bondì’s way of coming up with a budget programme that is totally unprecedented. TVM has its own newsroom that can do that kind of programme, totally impartially and objectively. Lou Bondì has written countless times against Alfred Sant and Labour, there’s no way we can treat him as an impartial journalist on this issue. Just look at the way he attacked the BA on his programme; he has turned the national station into one run by a regime.”
Asked whether this meant Labour will keep vetoing Bondiplus, Micallef said his party will decide “on a case by case basis”.
Yet Bondì insisted on Monday that the MLP had never complained about his impartiality or bias against the party – a comment rebutted by Micallef.
“In fact, we have twice complained about his impartiality, and our complaint has been twice upheld; the first one about the budget programme that was then held by the TVM newsroom, and the second about last Monday’s programme. He’s incapable of being impartial on such an issue. PBS has enough journalists to come up with their own programmes and analysis.”