Former PBS chief Anton Attard roped in for Church media shake-up

Anton Attard, the former chief executive of PBS and NET TV, has been appointed as a consultant with the Church’s radio station RTK as part of a wide revamp of its media team. 

Attard confirmed his position with MaltaToday but declined to offer further details of what his new role will entail, arguing that it would be “highly unethical” to discuss such plans with other media.

Attard arrives at RTK with a wealth of media experience, having headed the Nationalist Party’s TV station Net and having run Lawrence Gonzi’s media campaign in 2008. He was appointed CEO at the state broadcaster, PBS, in 2010, a position he occupied until 2016, when he was replaced at the helm by TV presenter John Bundy.

Attard had taken a personal interest in the Eurovision Song Contest, and indeed last year was head of Ira Losco’s delegation to Sweden. The Labour government had offered Attard another job at PBS, in charge of coordinating preparations for the Eurovision Song Contest, but he turned the offer down. 

The revamp of the Church’s media also sees the influential Fr Joe Borg, a media academic, in charge of improving the quality of the Church’s commercial media companies.

He told MaltaToday that the Church’s media should embrace pluralism and a diversity of opinions.

“Whoever reads my commentaries on the Sunday Times knows that I always defend the position that pluralism and diversity are part of the Church’s DNA. Its media should be like a rainbow, having a place for different opinions and positions while clearly pushing forward the ethos and worldview of the same Church.” 

He also warned that he has a “big problem with bigots, liars and mediocre people… particularly when these occupy different levels of responsibility in a Church media organisation” – a charge surely levelled against incumbents in the Catholic media group.

MaltaToday is also informed that veteran journalist Sylvana Debono, who until recently was junior manager at TVM, will return to RTK in some capacity. Debono was previously a journalist with Radio 101 and a communications manager at the Malta Environment and Planning Authority. 

Informed Church media sources – speaking on condition of anonymity – told MaltaToday that staff are still very much in the dark over the full nature of the shake-up and over what exact roles Attard and Borg will play. However, the move appears to be aimed at improving synergy between the Church’s Media Centre, RTK and its online portal Newsbook, and the Curia’s communications centre.

In his first public address as Archbishop in 2015, Charles Scicluna said that the Curia must be restructured so as to achieve efficiency and reduce its financial deficit. He has since granted key Curia positions to several lay persons. Former civil service head Godfrey Grima is now head of the Archbishop’s Secretariat, while former National Statistics Office head Michael Pace Ross is administrative secretary. Social worker Andrew Azzopardi has been appointed head of a new Church Commission to safeguard children, and former Din l-Art Helwa president Simone Mizzi is now head of the Church’s Cultural Heritage Commission.