The government has recently announced significant changes at PBS, including the setting up of an official editorial board which will be responsible for the quality of the programmes aired as well as the content of current affairs programmes and news bulletins.
The board will be independent of the PBS board of directors to which it will present a yearly report. How is this editorial board going to be held accountable? How are we going to ensure that these changes do not destroy instead of building the public broadcasting ethos that PBS should have?
The changes announced by the government substantially mean that PBS is being dismantled and will have to outsource more of its airtime. The government's reforms as they have been presented so far reinforce the Nationalist Party's stranglehold on PBS and are unacceptable in a modern democratic society.
The public broadcasting system is one of our painful national problems. Over the years it has not managed to build a tradition of being perceived and trusted as a national institution, as a common home where we all feel welcome. It is still a partisan institution, controlled by the party in government and used consistently to push forward the political agenda of the party in government. Seven years ago the EU Treaty of Amsterdam declared that the system of public broadcasting in the member states "is directly related to the democratic, social and cultural needs of each society and to the need to preserve present media pluralism".
In the beginning of 1999 the Council of Ministers issued a resolution stressing the "cultural, social and democratic function" of public broadcasting, "for the common good, has a vital significance for ensuring democracy, pluralism, social cohesion, cultural and linguistic diversity".
In 1996, the European parliament passed a resolution defining the role of public broadcasting as crucial for informed citizenship, helping to create "civil society, a political community and a public sphere where democratic debate takes place". It defined one of the main remits of public broadcasting services as "to provide unbiased and fully independent information, both in news coverage and in-depth factual programming capable of earning the audience's trust".
To enable it to carry out its major role, the European parliament states that a public broadcasting system must be accountable to the public in the way it spends the taxpayers' money. The European parliament also said that the editorial policies of public broadcasting services "should be clear and available for public scrutiny and debate".
No word was uttered about this when the government announced the PBS reforms a few days ago. The European Parliament urged all member states to take the necessary steps to make public broadcasting services independent from the government by setting up independent management systems, protecting their structures from political and economic interference and guaranteeing editorial independence for their staff.
All indications are that the Nationalist government is going to ignore all these European values in the reforms planned for the running of our public broadcasting system. All indications are that more loyal party activists will be appointed to run it as a PN structure to serve the party and not as a public broadcasting system embracing all the cultural and political diversity of our civil society and perceived by all of us as a central part of our common home.
Mr Bartolo is the Labour Party spokesman on EU affairs.