Censorship comes in different shapes and the Broadcasting Authority has found a very imaginative way to justify it.

It censors in the name of impartiality and balance, with COVID justifying the turning of PBS into a government noticeboard.

This all started way back on March 17, when Malta was faced with the challenge of the pandemic. To help address an issue of serious public health consequences, the BA issued a circular to all broadcasters.

In that circular, it gave its blessing to all the press conferences that could address issues related to COVID-19. It went so far as to encourage all broadcasters to air the news conferences live, implying they were to interrupt their schedules to do so.

The initiative taken by the BA was commendable. Unlike the government, the authority prioritised public health and sought to encourage broadcasters to participate in the dissemination of information.

But in issuing that circular, the authority underestimated the shrewdness of a Labour government that was all too willing to call press conferences at peak times and have them aired on public broadcasting channels.

Now that broadcasters were being encouraged by none other than the BA to air these conferences live, no doubt Robert Abela and others from his cabinet saw it fit to usurp the authority’s instructions for their own ends: getting as much time on national television as possible.

The government then decided it was good to capitalise on so much attention and use the door opened by the authority’s circular to score political points.

This is where things started going haywire. We ended up with a government happy to call press conferences at its own discretion with broadcasters encouraged to air them live.

Let me give the BA the benefit of the doubt and say that until then it had failed to realise that its circular was being manipulated. Until the press conferences were truly dealing with issues of public health, there was agreement that they were necessary and correct.

When, however, they turned into a roadshow for the prime minister and cabinet members, and the message shifted from public health to partisan politics, the BA was called to make a judgement. In that judgement it chose to blame the journalists.

The authority failed to realise that the government had manipulated its original good faith in issuing those instructions to broadcasters. For the authority, it was the journalists who made the prime minister talk partisan politics.

Is it possible the none of the members of the BA, its CEO or its monitoring team realised that the prime minister was spending a lot of time dishing out propaganda before viewers could get snippets of information that could be useful to them?

Only in Malta do journalists get blamed for the manner in which the prime minister and his ministers answer questions.

Politicians, who are meant to be held accountable by journalists, were asked questions which they saw as an opportunity to throw partisan political punches, ignoring the public health issue altogether. And the journalists were considered to be tricking PBS into airing partisan political messages.

Only in Malta do journalists get blamed for the manner in which the prime minister and his ministers answer questions

So in marches the BA and orders PBS to continue airing the press conferences – but not the journalists’ questions.

In other words, the prime minister can repeat, for minutes on end, that Malta is the best in the world, but the viewer cannot hear him being held to account for his actions.

Essentially, under the BA’s draconian decision, if a journalist asks Health Minister Chris Fearne if he agrees with the actions of his colleague Tourism Minister Julia Farrugia Portelli, PBS cannot air that part together with the press conference.

What if Fearne is asked why the Malta Tourism Authority blatantly mocked his measures in relation to bars? PBS cannot air that. What if Abela is asked whether it is the act of a responsible prime minister to enjoy his family holiday while retailers and families are becoming increasingly concerned about their financial future? No, PBS cannot air that either.

The decision shows that the BA has missed the wood for the trees. It is complicit in making PBS a government notice board exacerbating the already gut-wrenching situation of having the publicly funded broadcaster bow its head to government.

Now PBS has the best excuse – the Broadcasting Authority told me to do it.

To make matters worse, all this was brought about because journalists were blamed for doing their work.

If it were not for journalists, most political wrongs would remain uncovered. There would be no one to expose government wrongdoings or question its policies and actions.

Journalists ask questions in our name. In excluding those questions, the BA is curtailing our freedom to information, limiting our access to the rosy image that all governments want to project and that this government is so good at creating.

Saying that these questions can be aired on other stations simply reinforces the political divide, which our country simply cannot take for much longer.

If the BA is so afraid of receiving complaints about lack of impartiality and balance on PBS, then it needs to take a more active role in the name of freedom of expression and public debate, and this does not include censoring journalists.

It will need bold actions to foster public debate by including different opinions and ensuring that our national broadcaster does not remain a noticeboard for the government.

Therese Comodini Cachia, Nationalist MP