Xarabank team protest outside BA premises

A plaque with the word Censura (censorship) was yesterday placed on the main door of the Broadcasting Authority by Xarabank presenter Peppi Azzopardi, Fuq ix-Xarabank editor Ivan Bartolo and other people involved in the programme.

The BA has been at loggerheads with the Public Broadcasting Services and Xarabank producers since the BA decided that it wanted to see their television programmes before they were aired.

Xarabank is planning to broadcast a 20-minute daily programme in which a group of people are left in a villa to discuss their divergent views on EU membership, as from tomorrow.

The BA said it wanted to see the programmes beforehand, rather than take action after there had been an infringement, saying it had received a complaint about the proposed broadcasts from the Malta Labour Party.

Holding trophies presented to them by the BA, which twice declared Xarabank to be the best discussion programme aired on television, the producers said their advice to PBS was to ignore the BA directive.

"If the Broadcasting Authority keeps insisting that it has to see our daily programmes which start from tomorrow, I will tomorrow give the BA a list of programmes being aired and screened on Super One radio and television which are blatantly and constantly unbalanced and we shall see whether the BA has the guts to rectify the situation," Mr Azzopardi said.

He said the matter would be raised in the European Parliament and contacts were already made with the secretary general of the Greens, Arnold Cassola, who had the matter in hand.

He expressed hope that the Malta Press Club would speak out about the matter as the BA decision was a form of psychological violence on the Xarabank team.

"This is a question of principle. The BA might start telling PBS it wants to see the news and other programmes before they are broadcast".

Mr Azzopardi said the BA was trying to please the MLP and was only doing this because Dr Sant mentioned Xarabank during a mass meeting.

"The BA should do what is right, not what the parties dictate to it."

Ivan Bartolo, editor of Fuq ix-Xarabank, said the BA was discriminating against his weekly newspaper.

"All newspapers, including weeklies such as Malta Today and il-Gens illum, participate in the BA's televised press conferences."

He said they wrote to the BA and hoped that they would rectify the situation immediately.

The BA is arguing that it wants to see the programmes because they are being done in a format which was different from the usual one, and were a change to the PBS schedule that had already been approved.