Public Broadcasting Services sharply attacked the Broadcasting Authority today, expressing particular concern about two decisions recently taken by Authority. It said a policy which the BA appeared to have adopted recently on how it assess fairness and impartiality was a retrograde step for broadcasting  and an attack on the station's editorial independence.

It said in a statement that in a decision given yesterday following a complaint by the Nationalist Party, the BA ordered PBS to give the PN 10 minutes in which to reply to statements made by Dr Franco Debono during Bondi+ of January 10.

Some days ago the authority also ordered PBS to broadcast, during Xarabank, a 15-minute interview with Labour leader Joseph Muscat to reply to what the Prime Minister had said the week before.

The authority issued its order despite the fact that during the interview with the Prime Minister it had been stated that the issue was to continue to be followed and all protagonists were to be invited to discuss the matter in the following week. In this case, PBS was not even given the opportunity to present its views to the BA.

PBS noted that, for a number of years, the BA had been assessing balance and impartiality over a number of programmes and not just on one.

It seemed, however, that it was now taking regressive steps by seeing that each programme was balanced.

Such an attitude did not make journalistic sense and it was a mistake of the authority not to allow interviews with just one person, even when another edition of the programme would have an interview with someone who had differing and opposing ideas and opinions.

This was what happened at stations where the right to an opinion was sacrosanct and it was a shame that the BA was moving away from a model adopted in the free world.

PBS said it believed the authority should return to the established practice that impartiality and balance should be considered on a number of programme and not just on one .

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