The Broadcasting Authority has fined PBS €1,164 after finding that the March 8 edition of Bondiplus broke political impartiality rules.

The decision was slammed by programme presenter Lou Bondi', who said it was 'completely unfair'.

The Authority said it had acted upon a charge made by its own CEO.

It said the programme was about the government's activity in the two years of this legislature. The only guest was deputy Prime Minister Tonio Borg.

A substantial part of the programme consisted of features on projects, programmes and initiatives launched by the government.

"In the opinion of the authority, these features were nothing other than promotion of government activity, with no effort having been made at critical analysis" the BA said.

During the interview with Dr Borg, the presenter raised some points of criticism, the authority said, but this was only a feeble attempt to establish some sort of balance and did not balance out the features and the lack of participation by people of different views.

In a reaction, Mr Bondi' said this decision was 'completely unfair'.

"38 per cent of the programme was about the problems of the PN backbench. During the programme I asked a total of 26 hard hitting questions to Minister Tonio Borg and the features on what the government accomplished during the first two years of office were purely and totally factual. It is also worth pointing out that the Labour Party itself did not complain about his programme to the Broadcasting Authority," Mr Bondi' said.

This, he said 'would not stop here.'

PBS TO GO TO COURT

A spokesman for PBS said the state broadcaster would be seeking a judicial review of the BA decision and was considering taking the case to the Constitutional Court.