PBS pours fuel on troubled waters

Is it truly correct? Is it really necessary? Must the issue of Malta's relationship with the EU be dragged deeper into some new part of a quagmire practically every day? PBS, Malta's national broadcasting system, should ask itself the first two questions. The government, which appointed its board of directors, might consider the third question from the deeper perspective of the need to keep the issue within serious parameters.

The Broadcasting Authority may no longer be the contractor of PBS. It remains the regulator. It does not fulfil its function to near perfection. It must do much better to contain the extremities that pervade the political broadcasting media. And it certainly should review whether PBS is performing its professional role. Yet, the authority is what the nation counts upon to see to it that broadcasting is not a total case of anarchy and sickening partisanship.

Forget about overall balance - that was ditched long ago through the interpretation that balance cannot come from any political medium, but through the system. But specific balance in the state-owned PBS there definitely must be. For that to be approximated PBS cannot emulate the political media in their worst moments and cock a snook at the regulator.

PBS says that it means no disrespect by not implementing a directive by the authority to give the Labour Party spots to say its piece over the EU. It simply feels that the matter should be decided by the courts. The board of directors of PBS say that was their collective decision, and they stand by it.

The government, very injudiciously, supported that stand. The prime minister again forgot his national role in doing so, to the point that he observed that the Nationalist Party too was asking the courts to intervene. The Broadcasting Authority, which has its legal advisers to guide it in addition to the hefty legal presence at the top of its board - a former respected Chief Justice, no less - and also in the form of its Chief Executive, stands by its directive.

The mess continues. The perception that flows from it is that the Labour Party, which opposes EU membership, is being gagged by the PBS, though the Broadcasting Authority has ruled that space should be accorded to it to put its case. The authority made it clear, in issuing its directive, that it was not thereby impugning the Malta Information Centre, charged by the government to disseminate information about the EU, and accused by the Opposition of doing so in a biased fashion. That clarification sinks into the background of this most recent bout of foolishness.

The government should be trying to raise the debate over Malta and the EU to a dignified, objective level. It should try to focus on the arguments for and against, to allow as much clarity as possible to develop about the balance that is indicated by these arguments. Opinions will still differ. But at least, controversy might be contained within democratic and sensible limits. Those who step outside such limits would be throwing boomerangs.

The government should be doing this not because it favours EU membership so strongly. But because it spends financial resources collected from the people as a whole, from both those who want and others who reject membership. Once the broadcasting angle of the stand-off was placed before the Broadcasting Authority, and that regulator gave its decision, it should have been implemented.

By resisting that the government-appointed directors of PBS have simply jeopardised further the standing of the state company they currently lead. Worse, they have added fuel to the fire that ravishes whatever forests of reason we may have left on this incredible island.