Updated | PBS accuses Labour of deceitful campaign

Updated with PBS statement at 1:33 pm.

The PBS has accused Labour of running a "systematic campaign based on deceit" against the national broadcaster.

Hitting out at Labour MP Gino Cauchi, a former TVM news anchor, the PBS said that the way employees are engaged was different since he left the station to head Labour's newsroom at One TV.

"Labour's campaign is obviously intended to condition PBS employees, when the station is enjoying continuous success with its programmes, audience, and advertising."

Labour MP Gino Cauchi is once again raising objections against the national broadcaster's coverage of recent political events, accusing the government of turning it into "an integral part of its propaganda machine."

Cauchi hit out at the engagement of former Nationalist Party media employees with the Public Broadcasting Services, after having rationalised its workforce in its last restructuring exercise.

"In many cases, persons employed insensitive positions at PBS were employed or are PN local councillors," Cauchi said, in a reference to Net TV journalist David Bonello who yesterday submitted his resignation from the Naxxar council; and Jeremy Dalli, who is a Lija councillor.

Cauchi also made reference to PBS's chief executive Anton Attard, the prime minister's former election manager, as another person installed by government inside PBS. "These appointments do not augur well for impartiality in public broadcasting, threatening this very important element to our democracy."

But the PBS said in a statement that it had engaged a former Super One radio presenter - breakfast radio presenter Arthur Caruana - with national radio station Radju Malta, as well as a former One News cameraman.

"They join a PBS journalist who previously spent nine years at One News. They were engaged because they applied for a vacancy and were competent enough, irrespective of their political ideology, like any other PBS employee."

PBS said Labour had no problem in seeing its party activists employed at PBS. "The only balance it seeks is what it deems fit to be heard."

Cauchi has previously asked the Broadcasting Authority to get the Public Broadcasting Services in line with broadcasting legislation, accusing Where's Everybody directors Lou Bondì and Peppi Azzopardi of breaching BA legislation that asks presenters not to foment doubt about their objectivity on-air.

The Public Broadcasting Services says it only enforces the impartiality of its TV presenters during elections, and that Section 19 of the BA legislation [READ - opens PDF] "is not enforceable" by the Broadcasting Authority but that TVM enforces it when there is some kind of election in the country.