The Broadcasting Authority said it had never received any formal complaints from the Labour Party (PL) over partisan reporting as was claimed yesterday by the party's general secretary.
Jason Micallef said complaints filed by the party against the state broadcaster's partisan style of reporting had been upheld by the Broadcasting Authority.
However, the Broadcasting Authority denied ever receiving any formal complaints from the party.
During a press conference held outside the broadcasting watchdog's offices in Ħamrun, Mr Micallef and the PL spokesman for national broadcasting Evarist Bartolo accused PBS of partisan and biased reporting.
Mr Micallef, who was speaking after a meeting with the authority's newly-appointed board, said Labour was unhappy with the PBS newsroom's type of reporting.
The responsibility of PBS was towards the public and not towards any association and/or political party, Mr Micallef insisted.
Mr Bartolo said the PL would not accept any partisan manipulation in the state television's news bulletin: "We don't believe it is the role of PBS to be a finer and more sophisticated version of Net TV".
The PL had filed several complaints with the authority against the state broadcaster and these were all upheld, Mr Micallef claimed.
When contacted for comments later on in the afternoon after the regulator's denial, Mr Micallef insisted he never said he had filed any complaints and explained that he was planning to file one over an item carried by PBS on Sunday.
He said it was unacceptable that the news items aired by PBS newsroom over the past two days were "rampantly" biased when, on Sunday, the station had carried two separate corrections for the same story.
When contacted for his comments, the PBS head of news, Natalino Fenech, said the station had issued a correction after receiving a call from PL news coordinator Kurt Farrugia who complained that figures it quoted in the 6 p.m. news bulletin were incorrect. However, he added, it resulted that Mr Farrugia's so-called correction was incorrect and, consequently, PBS had to carry another correction.
Dr Fenech said the station had received two written complaints by the PL last year - in February and July. He wrote back to the PL and the matters were resolved without their being passed on to the Broadcasting Authority.
An authority spokesman confirmed that there were no official complaints filed by the PL against PBS last year.
Mr Micallef said that at the meeting with the regulator's officials, the authority had accepted the party's proposal to hold a national conference on broadcast journalism ethics.