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Karl Schembri
Almost two months since her name was officially announced, Sylvana Cristina is expected to be finally appointed PBS news manager this week after reaching an agreement about her financial package with the Investments Ministry, MaltaToday can reveal. The top post at the newsroom has been left vacant for almost two years.
Sources at PBS say the initial obstacles to her appointment have now been surpassed following a “very fruitful meeting” with ministry officials last Friday and her appointment will be announced this week.
Cristina was asking for a package in the region of Lm16,000, similar to that offered to Times journalist Vanessa Macdonald before her appointment was unceremoniously shot down by the Office of the Prime Minister.
Currently the PBS head of programmes, Cristina was also resisting a year-long probation that the ministry wanted to impose on her despite her long experience at the station.
Shortly after her official announcement, Investments Minister Austin Gatt had said he still preferred having Macdonald instead of Cristina. Her appointment will now happen in the wake of the resignations of chairman Andrew Agius Muscat and editorial board chairman Fr Joe Borg.
Just before resigning, Fr Borg penned a highly critical editorial board report slamming the board of directors for turning the public broadcasting station into a commercial one while abdicating its mission.
According to the report, Cristina will be heading a newsroom that is incapable of carrying its investigations because of serious technological shortcomings and low funding. The report says only 5.5 per cent of TVM’s 8pm news stories originated from the journalists’ initiative over the last year, with none of them being investigative reports.
PBS journalists cannot even access e-mail or the internet on their computers as they write their stories, the report says. The only news programme produced by the PBS newsroom, Info, was planned to eventually be moved just before the 8pm news during peak time, but this has been “unfortunately transferred to the inopportune time slot on Sunday at 6.15pm”. Also, news items written by journalists are being visually edited by different people.
The newsroom also lacks beat reporters at the law courts, parliament and to report on EU issues.
About Cristina’s appointment, the editorial board expressed its satisfaction that she was finally chosen but remarked that “the drawn out procedures to fill this post were disappointing and frustrating”.
kschembri@mediatoday.com.mt
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