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Karl Schembri
PBS chairman Andrew Agius Muscat’s resignation has not only had to do with his job commitments as management consultant for Chef’s Choice, but it also came in the wake of a serious fall out with Investments Minister Austin Gatt about the PBS rebranding tender last August.
MaltaToday has learnt that a company doing the marketing for Chef’s Choice was one of the three bidders for the tender. Where’s Everybody? had also made their proposal, which included an audience survey despite their active involvement in the production of PBS programmes.
The resignation of the PBS chairman and of the head of the station’s editorial board last Wednesday has left the public broadcasting company in its most serious crisis following months of bitter internal conflicts between the two protagonists, MaltaToday can reveal.
An investigation made by this newspaper has confirmed that Fr Joe Borg’s stated reason to Investments Minister Austin Gatt for wanting to relinquish his post as chairman of the PBS editorial board was that he had “made peace with the Archbishop” following his persistent dismissal of Mgr Guzeppi Mercieca’s pleas to stay out of PBS.
However this explanation may fail to impress government. None of the two resignations had anything to do with the aborted appointment of Vanessa Macdonald as news manager.
News of the two bidders’ involvement is said to have infuriated the minister, especially when he discovered that Where’s Everybody? – with one of its directors being the minister’s cousin, Lou Bondì – was competing for the tender.
The minister ordered the chairman to scrap the whole tender exercise as it was threatening to be highly embarrassing, on the grounds that “no prior cost-benefit assessment had been made and no clear scope of supply had been constructed and included in the tender.”
Contacted Friday, Agius Muscat downplayed the incident, but admitted that Chef’s Choice’s marketing consultants had submitted their proposals for the tender.
“It’s public knowledge,” he said. “They had a right to apply, the only problem was that we didn’t issue a detailed tender document as the public sector is required to do. I now know it’s not the process used by government entities, I do things differently in the private sector. We wanted to speed up the rebranding so that it would be ready for the October schedule. In any case the process was annulled and it had nothing to do with my resignation.”
Before the tender problem, disagreement between Fr Borg and Agius Muscat was reaching heightened proportions at the start of summer when the company was discussing the October schedule. The conflict ended up dividing the station sharply between the editorial board and the PBS board of directors.
While Fr Borg was pushing for “quality public broadcasting,” objecting to certain entertainment programmes at peak time that were occupying airtime which he believed should have been allocated to the PBS core mission, Agius Muscat was looking at the ratings and the bottom line.
“Conflict is too strong a word,” Agius Muscat said. “The station had to face reality and work with its allotted resources. Financially the station is now much better and audience ratings are high, and I never agreed that culture should be broadcast at a loss with the excuse of public broadcasting obligations. Culture should be entertaining to attract audiences.”
Fr Borg declined to speak about Agius Muscat’s vision of public broadcasting but he did hint that his viewpoints about public broadcasting will be in the editorial board’s annual report which is still unpublished.
“The report has seven pages full of concrete and practical recommendations,” Fr Borg said. “Last year government published this report. I augur that it will do the same this year. If and when this happens I hope that the media will not ignore it like they did last year. I hope the media will facilitate a calm and intelligent public discussion about all the issues mentioned in the report. In comparison, the present speculations are inane and will lead us nowhere.”
Fr Borg’s views were also in stark contrast with those of the minister, although he insists that he never had any editorial interference from Gatt.
“After I was appointed Chairman of the Editorial Board I practically had nothing to do with Minister Gatt. He scrupulously respected the autonomy of the Editorial Board. I had no problem working with Minister Gatt in the past. I have no problem to work with him again.”
The botched appointment of Vanessa Macdonald as news manager had nothing to do with the two resignations, but it also was another source of conflict within the PBS corridors.
While Agius Muscat had agreed with the minister’s decision to appoint Macdonald despite her fourth placing on the selection board’s short list, he was as reluctant as the minister on appointing internally Sylvana Cristina despite naming her himself after the prime minister shot down Macdonald’s appointment.
MaltaToday can reveal that Fr Borg had recommended Sylvana Cristina be appointed news manager three years ago, under Anthony Tabone’s chairmanship, but she had turned down the offer because of family health problems.
Now, Agius Muscat was refusing to accept Cristina’s request to have a financial package similar to that which was offered to Macdonald in the region of Lm16,000.
Asked whether, like Gatt, he preferred having Macdonald instead of Cristina, Agius Muscat declined to comment.
Meanwhile it is clear Gatt chose to publish the two resignations on the same day last Wednesday – angering Fr Borg – in an exercise of damage control, although this hardly puts him in a good light considering the unrelenting wave of resignations under his portfolio.
Fr Borg informed the minister of his decision and his reasons behind it in a meeting on 30 August. Government sources say the minister was not convinced of Fr Borg’s reasons, months since the archbishop’s admonition, but Gatt decided not to put pressure on the priest to remain except to resign after submitting the editorial boards’ annual report.
Fr Borg submitted his report at the beginning of this month.
“I again informed minister Gatt that I would send him my resignation any day he wished,” Fr Borg told MaltaToday. “Last Tuesday he asked me to send it on Wednesday, which I did. I stated in my letter of resignation that as the above sequence of events shows and as the Minister fully knows, my resignation had nothing to do with that of Mr Agius Muscat. It is a pity that the way things happened brought with them all this confusion and vain speculation about my resignation.”
The resignations also led Gatt to cancel a press conference that was due to be held last Friday, in which he was about to announce the PBS financial situation and to announce the appointment of a new chief executive instead of the incumbent Andrew Psaila.
Psaila is meant to be made in charge of an upcoming PBS technical overhaul, with financial controller Albert Debono taking over as the chief executive of the company, consolidating further Gatt’s bottom line approach at the station. In the meantime, the post of news manager remains vacant.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
May 2003 – Austin Gatt as minister for government investments takes over PBS, formerly falling under education minister Louis Galea. Replaces chairman Austin Sammut with Michael Mallia, after Vodafone chairman Joe Grioli turned down Gatt’s offer to head PBS.
May 2004 – Gatt unveils his restructuring plan, including the shedding of two-thirds of PBS staff and the closing down of FM Bronja and Channel 12. Fr Joe Borg is confirmed as chairman of the PBS editorial board.
July 2004 – Carmel Attard turns down offer to become the new news manager under a restructured PBS, after he was selected by the interviewing board. Charles Flores, who is next in line, is excluded by Gatt for his involvement in state broadcasting in the eighties, a decision then slammed by the Ombudsman.
September 2004 – Workers given hefty early retirement packages are re-engaged for works at PBS as part-timers, infuriating the prime minister’s office.
10 October 2004 – MaltaToday breaks the news of Mallia’s fallout with Gatt, who demanded the chairman’s resignation following “certain decisions” being “not in line with Ministry policies,” according to a ministry statement.
November 2004 – Gatt appoints Andrew Agius Muscat, 30, new PBS chairman. He tells MaltaToday in his first interview that the news manager vacancy was “not even a problem”.
February 2005 – Attard turns down the offer once again to become news manager. Chief Executive Andrew Psaila starts negotiations with Roderick Agius of Net TV, who places second on the interviewing board’s short list that is kept under wraps.
July 2005 – MaltaToday breaks the story of the chairman’s contract negotiations with Times journalist Vanessa Macdonald to become news manager.
August 2005 – Macdonald is kept in limbo about her employment. First reports of the prime minister’s intervention stopping Macdonald’s appointment leak in the Labour press, which also alleged Gonzi wanted Net journalist Nathaniel Attard to head the PBS newsroom.
21 August 2005 – MaltaToday reveals production company Where’s Everybody’s bid for a PBS rebranding exercise that included audience and perceptions survey, despite having their own programmes broadcast on the same station. Agius Muscat declines to answer questions.
30 August 2005 – Fr Joe Borg informs Gatt that he would like to resign from the chair of the editorial board after “making peace with the Archbishop”. Gatt asks him to remain until he presents the editorial board’s annual report in November.
18 September 2005 – MaltaToday reveals Gatt’s orders to PBS to scrap rebranding exercise.
28 September 2005 – Prime Minister’s office orders Gatt to scrap recruitment of news manager, accusing him of having “compromised the whole process”.
12 October 2005 – Gatt publishes correspondence with prime minister’s office stopping short the selection process. Announces decision to appoint programmes manager Sylvana Cristina as news manager.
16 October 2005 – MaltaToday publishes the interviewing board’s short list showing that Macdonald had placed fourth, after Roderick Agius and Carmen Sammut, formerly a director at Super One and now lecturer in journalism. Despite her placing, Gatt ordered PBS to start negotiations with Macdonald, striking out Agius and Sammut because of their “political baggage”.
6 November 2005 – MaltaToday reveals chairman’s cold feet about Cristina’s pending appointment. Twelve days after demanding a similar package to the one that was about to be offered to Macdonald, Cristina is left in the dark about her new contract.
7 November 2005 – Gatt tells The Malta Independent that he preferred Macdonald to Cristina in a clear sign of defiance towards the prime minister. He also announces that he is about to change the chief executive.
8 November 2005 – Gatt tells Fr Joe Borg to send his letter of resignation, as agreed, days after the editorial board’s report was submitted.
9 November 2005 – Chairman Andrew Agius Muscat resigns. Investments ministry distributes letter of resignation through DOI. Fr Borgs sends his letter of resignation shortly afterwards, which is also then made public through DOI. |
