Both during colonial times and since Malta became an independent state, the public service broadcaster has been criticised as being a means of state propaganda. Like the colonial government, neither a Nationalist government nor a Labour one wanted to let go of their control over the public service broadcaster.
The public service broadcaster needs to be detached completely from government control
When the Broadcasting Authority began a process to start regulating all forms of broadcasting in Malta, the Nationalist government did not accede to its request that the authority licenses the public service broadcaster. Malta was in a situation, from 1991 onwards, where the government could decide which broadcasters it licenses and which broadcasters the authority should license. Yet there was a regulator properly established to carry out this task. The government decided to permit the authority to license only private commercial and political broadcasting stations as well as community radio stations.
The authority ended up only licensing Bronja FM, a public service radio broadcasting station. When the management of PBS approached the authority to license Radju Parlament, the government intervened and not only did it not allow this to happen but even ensured that Radju Bronja was to be no longer licensed by the authority.
When I left the Broadcasting Authority in 2009, the authority did not even licence one single radio station of PBS Ltd. The government was reluctant to tolerate one radio station, even if of a cultural non-political nature, to be somehow licensed by that authority specifically established by the Constitution to license broadcasting stations – the Broadcasting Authority. Government wanted and continued to retain a tight grip over the public service broadcaster.
During my 11-year working experience at the Broadcasting Authority I found out that the public service broadcaster was the most difficult broadcaster to control from a regulatory point of view, more difficult than the political stations in so far as impartiality and balance were concerned. At least, the political stations were all licensed by the Broadcasting Authority and it could exercise better control over them through licence conditions and requirements.
Rather than giving the example and abiding by the impartiality and balance provisions of the Constitution, the public service broadcaster was the station which gave a hard time to the authority to enforce the constitutional provision of balance and impartiality when this should never have been the case.
It was only lately that the authority did manage to take over the licensing of digital radio and satellite radio and television from government control. The authority also drafted a law to begin licensing the public broadcasting services, both radio and television, but this amendment never saw the light of day. It was never approved by the government. This was perhaps the greatest recent setback that the authority has suffered apart from being obliged to permit political parties to own their own radio and television broadcasting stations.
There is no doubt that changes are required in this field of broadcasting law. The public service broadcaster must be detached completely from government control: it cannot continue to be seen and perceived to be a puppet in the minister’s hand.
Public broadcasting services should be licensed by the Broadcasting Authority and not by the Government, as is the situation of all other radio and television broadcasting stations in Malta.
The public service broadcaster should not be established as a company answerable to the government of the day but should be a body corporate established by law answerable to Parliament.
Being a very contentious issue, its board of governors should be appointed not by the Government but by the President of Malta following consultation with the Broadcasting Authority and other stakeholders.
The editorial board of PBS Limited should be abolished. Editorial matters should, instead, vest uniquely in the board of directors. The current situation of having a split personality, that is, an editorial board and an editor who is the registered editor under the Press Act and the Broadcasting Act, needs to be addressed by having only one employee, the head of news, responsible for editorial matters.
The board of directors should be responsible for all the functions of the new public corporation, foremost among which its soul, that is, programming including news bulletins and current affairs programmes. The latter programmes should not continue to be farmed out to independent producers and the national broadcaster should take pride in seeing its own newsroom employees producing all current affairs programmes.
The Broadcasting Authority had been repeatedly making this point with PBS but, unfortunately, with no success.
The Nationalist government had a golden opportunity in 2011 to rectify matters when the Broadcasting Authority, in a bill concerning the general interest objective network, unanimously advised it to pass on to it the licensing responsibility of the national broadcasting stations. Yet the Government did not heed the authority’s well intentioned advice.
Let us hope that the Labour Party will not follow in the footsteps of its predecessor in office but will be audacious enough to take the bold and correct decision, in the public interest, to divest itself of (a) licensing the national broadcaster, (b) appointing the board of directors of the national broadcaster, and (c) influencing the editorial policy of the said broadcaster.
No government – colonial, Nationalist and Labourite – has yet risen to this occasion since 1935 when the first radio broadcasts went on air. It is only when this courageous step is taken that political broadcasting stations can be closed down and the authority offer all political parties airtime on a television channel and radio frequency managed by it, as it does today with party political broadcasts. The sooner this is done, the better it will be to nip in the bud the divisive partisan nature these politically owned broadcasting services sow and cultivate in Maltese society.
Kevin Aquilina is dean of the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta.