The Broadcasting Authority yesterday instructed One News to clarify its reporting of a recent ruling, saying the state television's newsroom had not been found guilty of biased reporting.
In a right of reply, the Broadcasting Authority referred to a news bulletin aired on One News on February 24, which said that the authority had found PBS guilty of unfair reporting. The authority clarified that this was not the case for it could not establish whether what had been reported by PBS was correct or not.
Following a complaint filed by the Labour Party (PL) over two items aired in February, the Broadcasting Authority ruled last week that PBS was guilty of repeating an item but did not go into the merits of whether the reporting was correct.
The PL had filed a complaint over a news bulletin carried by PBS on February 16, which the party described as unfair.
The news item had appeared in the eight o'clock TV bulletin as a follow-up to one aired the day before. On February 15, PBS carried a news item as a follow-up to a story carried on The Sunday Times on state party funding and included comments by the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the House and the Opposition Leader.
Labour asked PBS to correct part of what it had reported but it turned out that the correction filed by Labour was itself mistaken, according to PBS.
In order to clarify the corrections, the TV station carried another story on Monday including the same comments and a vox pop.
PL general secretary Jason Micallef and the party's spokesman for national broadcasting, Evarist Bartolo condemned PBS for carrying two corrections on the same story on Sunday.
The authority ruled against the fact that the station had repeated the item, pointing out that if the station wanted to clarify the two corrections then it should have limited itself to the clarification.
It said that it could not go into the merits of whether the story was correct or not.
Referring to the bulletin carried by One News last week, the Broadcasting Authority yesterday said the station was wrong in saying that the item aired on PBS was incorrect.
When contacted for his comments, Mr Micallef expressed surprise at the clarification. He queried whether the authority's newly appointed CEO would investigate and issue a right of reply over statements made by the chairman of the station's editorial board, Joe Pirotta in a PBS news item.