Editorial • 10 November 2002

ToonToday: Toy Story

Taking it too far

The chairman of the BA, former Chief Justice Joseph Said Pullicino, must be accused of confusing form with content.

His constitutional brief is to talk about the way content is relayed not the form and the medium that transmit it to the viewers.

What and how it happens at PBS must be the business of anyone other than the BA.

Mr Justice Joseph Said Pullicino is a former colleague of the President Guido Demarco. Today he is Manwel Cuschieri’s hero and icon.

Some unkind souls have suggested that Mr Justice Said Pullicino’s skirmishes into the workings at PBS are blessed by Profs Demarco.

There is little or no proof of this. Yet, it would help if the President points out to Said Pullicino the sad implication of his adventures.

Last Thursday’s press conference was a shoddy piece of theatre.

Here was a man who knows little or nothing about the media telling the media how to get their act together.

He freely expressed his concern about monopolies at PBS and programmes being farmed out to private media makers. He did not say that PBS alone cannot make the mark.

To add insult to injury, he anointed an outsider (not a BA or PBS officer) Dr Sapiano, the youngish flamboyant lawyer as his linesman when the same Sapiano has served as an the insidious host to various farmed out programmes at PBS. Dr Said Pullicino continues to betray his vision for PBS when he announces that the BA have farmed out a programme on the EU to producer Godfrey Grima!

The general public is in no position to differentiate between the Broadcasting Authority (BA) and the Public Broadcasting Services (PBS). The former is a constitutionally established authority intended to ensure fairness in broadcasting in all the media (not only PBS). PBS stands for state television.

Many still think that they are one and the same thing. This misconception may well become a reality if the Chairman of the BA Joseph Said Pullicino gets his way.

Dr Joseph Said Pullicino is a hard nut to crack; he is reputed to take all suggestions and shelve them in a mental archive and to respond to criticism with hedgehog tactics.

His legal record did little to convince people such as the author of this leader that his sympathies lie with the Nationalist party but today he is first and foremost an independent minded man with a particular but bizarre and peculiar vision for the broadcasting media.

He is probably well meaning but his judgements on the role of state television in the present scenario are ill advised and dangerous.

There is abundant evidence to suggest that his forceful incursions on what state television should be will continue, to the detriment of colourful and investigative journalism.

But he is to blame only for not having appreciated the complexity of the problem called ‘media.’ The real fault, if we can call it such, lies with the Prime Minister Dr Fenech Adami for having nominated the man in the first place. Not because of a lack integrity but simply because in 2002 a Chairman of a Broadcasting Authority needs to be someone with a more flexible background than that of a Chief Justice.

The ball is in the PM’s court and as things stand he has little or no room for manoeuvre unless he decides to remove the present Chairman.