Try and follow the logic of this trail of events, or the lack of it.

On May 18, the prime minister held a press conference to announce restrictive conditions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. The conference lasted one-and-a-half hours during prime time TV. He delved into such matters as the reforms the government was introducing and the new system it was proposing for the appointment of members of the judiciary.

He even defended some colleagues of his who had been criticised by the Commissioner for Standards in Public Life for breach of ethics. All this in the name of the COVID-19 pandemic. A sort of COVID-19 politics in its crudest form.

The opposition immediately protested with the Broadcasting Authority, insisting on a right of reply. The case languished somewhere in the authority’s offices for weeks on end. Now, a right of reply make sense only if it is acceded to immediately. Granting the opposition a right of reply in September for what was said in May is, to say the least, preposterous.

Towards the end of August, the authority delivered its decision. Lo and behold, it did not grant a right of reply. Now it is evident that what the prime minister did on May 18 was to occupy all the air time on the public broadcasting station at peak viewing time, to prevent the opposition’s press conference of that very day being broadcast at prime time.

But what is even more sinister and diabolic in the authority’s decision was that it ruled that since the comments  of the prime minister on matters  not related to the pandemic  were “provoked” by questions asked by the media, it ordered that, for impartiality’s sake, in future news conferences, if they are not medical updates,  journalists’ questions should not be broadcast by PBS on TVM or TVM2 as an integral part of the conference and the broadcast should stop with the closing of the speakers’ speech.

A request by the opposition for a right of reply was not only denied but diabolically turned into a restriction on the freedom of the media to ask questions at press conferences held by the powers that be!

This was not the first incident of this sort. Before the 2017 elections, Joseph Muscat had transformed the end- of-the-year address into an exercise in brazen political propaganda, not only in words but also visually.

There is no level playing in the political arena right now- Tonio Borg

His address was peppered with shots and videos showing him meeting young families, who obviously showered praise on some government policy or another. When the then opposition leader Simon Busuttil, protested, the decision was: the authority does not deal with style but only with content!

Only recently, the public broadcasting station gave scant importance to the sensational news that a former chief of staff at the Office of the Prime Minister had been arrested and his entire assets seized. A news item relating to the theft of €1,400 in fuel was given priority.

That is why there is a need for a radical change in the way the authority is composed and functions.

The opposition last May proposed that in all authorities established by the constitution, including the Broadcasting Authority, half the members should be appointed from among persons who enjoy the confidence of the government and the other half of the opposition. 

The chairpersons of these authorities should be appointed by a two-thirds majority of all the members of the legislature and, in default, by the President of Malta acting according to his own deliberate judgment. 

There is no level playing in the political arena right now. The government has axed the popular programme Xarabank, the official reason being that it has been around for too long. I have not always agreed with the way certain subjects were discussed during Xarabank but no one can deny that the discussion programme has given a voice to the voiceless and has not been cowered by the arrogance of the strong.

Dissett has been removed from the schedule of programmes of the public TV station and we were duly informed by government pundits on the media of the party in government that more reforms are in store in the news division of PBS.

Reforms, that is to say, which give more control by the government over the broadcast of news.

Indeed, the broadcasting landscape needs to be radically changed and a permanent solution be found which would guarantee impartiality in public broadcasting, if need be through different channels. If that were to happen, then one can seriously consider closing down the political party TV stations.

A new era would have been born.

Tonio Borg is a former European Commissioner.