BA turns down PN complaint against PBS on media imbalance

The Broadcasting Authority has turned down a complaint of media imbalance filed by the Nationalist Party against PBS head of news Reno Bugeja, over the failure by the national broadcaster to report comments by finance minister Edward Scicluna to a European Parliament committee.

The comments by Scicluna saw the minister admitting that the government's handling of the Individual Investor Programme had been "hurried", but while the comments were reported by the rest of the media, these were not reported by PBS.

The BA decision points out that PBS had derilected its duty to report the news item, but said this fact alone did not cotribute to an act of media imbalance since the national broadcaster reported all subsequent references to the case when they were brought up by the Nationalists.

The BA decided it will not give the Nationalists a remedy.

On its part, PBS had claimed that the  item had "no news value".

In a statement, the PN insisted that the BA had found PBS "guilty" of not broadcasting the Scicluna item, and that it had proved that the PN was right in pointing out that PBS was wrong when it claimed the item had no news value. "The BA decided that PBS had to see what this speech was about and to report. We are satisfied with this decision and we call on PBS not to keep covering up government's errors."

The BA decision has to be broadcast by PBS in its entirety in tonight's 8pm bullettin.