Norma Saliba has resigned as head of news at TVM, she said on Tuesday in a Facebook post which denounced a “character assassination” against her.
Saliba quit the role just under three years after she was first appointed to the top position at the national broadcaster, taking over from Reno Bugeja in July 2020.
She said she was resigning for “personal reasons” but implied that she was being edged out, saying “I had more to give to the profession.”
“I have taken this decision serenely,” she wrote on Facebook.
Saliba had reportedly been on long leave for the past weeks, with TVM insiders saying she has not been reporting to work.
Sources say she fell out of favour with TVM executive chairman Mark Sammut, who had her replaced as TVM’s registered editor in January 2022. She was replaced in that role by Charles Dalli, but stayed on as head of news at the national station.
Last month, PN media reported that Saliba had been hired by the Planning Authority to provide voiceovers for adverts, in violation of a code of ethics that prohibits PBS journalists from doing paid work for third parties.
Saliba and the PA noted that the voiceover work was done in 2018, before she assumed the post as head of news. At the time, Saliba was already a TVM journalist and served as president of the Institute of Maltese Journalists.
Saliba’s time at the helm of the TVM news operation was racked by complaints of bias.
When Pope Francis visited Malta in April 2022, the TVM news bulletin covered all parts of his speech apart from the section in which he warned his local audience about corruption. And when thousands protested overdevelopment in Valletta, the broadcaster did not report that two mayors from the governing Labour Party spoke at the event.
In her resignation post, Saliba noted that the 8pm TVM news bulletin was now reaching a record 170,000 people, highlighted her work to encourage in-house documentaries and female journalists, and emphasised that under her leadership, the station won more cases before the Broadcasting Authority than it lost.
“I never went after anyone or took advantage of my position to help or damage people. Despite that, in the past weeks I’ve become the victim of a misleading character assassination campaign,” she wrote.
“Those who know me did not believe the lies. My answer is silence, but we need more work to protect journalists and respect women in high positions,” Saliba wrote.