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| Anthony Tabone, BA Chairman |
A pattern is slowly emerging. From now till the election, the Partit Laburista is going to take advantage of the Broadcasting Authority's spinelessness and use it to browbeat whoever it wishes to destroy.
This is how it works. The PL first complains to the BA about some inane thing or other. The BA realises that the complaint is spurious, does not uphold it and gives no remedy.
But as a sop to the PL it will throw in a comment which could be interpreted that the PL has a small point, maybe, sort of, on the other hand. The PL will pick up this comment and inflate to the extent that whoever the PL is targetting is made to look like Jack the TV Ripper. And the PL notches up another "case" of discrimination against it.
A case in point is today's PL press release about a complaint they lodged against a PBS news report.
1. The PL release says that PBS was found "guilty of an imbalance against the PL". The BA found no such guilt.
2. The PL release says that BA somehow found PBS guilty of airing "a fictitious story which suggested that there are internal contradictions inside the PL". The BA did not even hint that the PBS story was untrue, let alone find the station guilty of airing a 'fictitious story'.
Then what was PBS found guilty of? This is what happened and what was confirmed by the BA. While airing a PL's right of reply, the PBS employee directing the news mistakenly aired the wrong footage (which was, by the way, still related to the story). Incidentally, the employee in question happens to be a delegate of the Partit Laburista. That's it. It was just a genuine human mistake.
This ugly farce being made by the PL of the Broadcasting Authority, a constitutional body, has to be stopped. And the man who can bring the curtain down on it is Anthony Tabone, its chairman.
The BA has to deliver clear cut decisions which are not amenable to political manipulation. If it finds a programme or a station guilty of breaking the law it should say so. But if it finds no guilt, it has no right to hand down decisions which cast shadows.
To quote Mark Twain, there is no such thing as being a little pregnant. You either are or you aren't.
2 comments:
Wait for your turn, Mr. Bond.
Ezatt kif qed jahdem il labour, jghamel ghageb min kull haga li fil verita hija hela ta hin,rizorsi u manpower.U l iktar li qeda tinkwetani hi,li tara nies li jsegwu daw il blogs u imbghad johorgu hdura liema bhala fil kummenti li jiktbu. Wisq nibza li l elezzjoni li gejja il partit nazzjonalista ha jitlifa,mhux ax haqqu,imma b certi decizjonijiet stupidi li saru,u it tajjeb li sar taht il partit nazzjonalista jintesa. u f dak il kaz irridu noqghodu attenti ax nhoss li daw in nies tant iridu jirbhu b kull mezz possibli li kif jitilghu fil gvern ,immorru lura az zminijiet tat transfers u vendikazzjonijiet.
Proset Lou,keep up the good work,gieli taffeg :) (ovvja,kullhadd uman) imma on the whole niehu pjacir naqra l artikli tieghak,ul programmi li tghamel.
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