Church radio RTK103 summoned by BA over Imperium Europa complaint

Church radio station RTK103 has announced it will take “any steps necessary” over the result of a prospective hearing at the Broadcasting Authority after being summoned by the BA for a second time from a complaint by far-right party Imperium Europa.

RTK103 received notice of an urgent meeting for Thursday afternoon, from BA secretary Adriano Spiteri – who until recently was an active member of Imperium Europa — to justify its position.

The radio station was fined heftily earlier in the year for refusing to air the far-right views of Imperium Europa led by convicted racist Norman Lowell.

Last January, the BA fined the radio station €6,410 after host Andrew Azzopardi said he would never allow Norman Lowell to express his racist views on the radio programme. In 2013 an appeals court confirmed a Magistrates’ Court judgment finding Lowell guilty of three charges of inciting racial hatred.

An RTK103 spokesperson said: “As a radio station we took the decision to steer clear of inviting any of the candidates contenting the European Parliament elections and the BA’s stand in our regard has once again showed it is clearly skewed in favour of Imperium Europa.”

The spokesperson said it was impossible to be assured of a fair hearing when repeated attempts to exclude Adriano Spiteri’s presence from its meetings with the BA, were turned down by the BA board. The BA’s own secretary, Adriano Spiteri, was an IE activist who sat at a birthday gathering for Lowell in 2020, having publicly condemned Malta’s hate speech legislation during an intervention on RTK103.

RTK’s spokesperson added that the BA’s position became clearer this week when it concluded that Imperium Europa’s misleading advert showing an edited clip of Peppi Azzopardi saying “Norman Lowell was right” was not in breach of any law.

“A long-standing voice for human rights, Mr Azzopardi has repeatedly challenged Imperium Europa’s fascist stand. It’s a sad state of affairs when the authority that should be upholding impartiality is instead resorting to these unbalanced tactics,” the spokesperson said.

A key provision in the Broadcasting Act that specifically states “audiovisual commercial communications shall not: prejudice respect for human dignity; include or promote any discrimination based on sex, racial or ethnic origin, nationality, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation”.

“The Broadcasting Authority is wilfully ignoring a key provision in the very act that governs its existence and conduct,” RTK’s spokesperson said, “as well as continually defending an individual who has been convicted by Malta’s courts of inciting racial hatred and has publicly declared that ‘Nazism was alright at the time’.

“It is indeed ironic that as the world commemorates the 80th anniversary of D-Day – during which thousands of Allied soldiers gave up their lives to end the tyranny of Nazism across Europe – the BA is doing what it can to ensure that fascist sentiments can still be expressed on Malta’s airwaves.”