‘Former PBS editor lobbied to take programme off air’

A defamation suit filed by the former PBS head of news Natalino Fenech today saw the events leading to his fall-out with MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan being played out in court.

Balzan is being sued for libel for opining in an April 2008 column in MaltaToday, that Fenech had misreported then Opposition leader Joseph Muscat in saying he was willing to give up his candidature for the Labour leadership in favour of George Abela.

Balzan had also said Fenech had made false reports about negotiations between Muscat and Abela during the 2008 leadership election, a comment that Fenech claims was libellous in his regard.

Taking the witness stand, Fenech recalled his appointment to PBS head of news in January 2008, saying that chairman Joe Fenech Conti had asked him if he was still interested in the job given that he had placed a previous application.

Fenech claimed he had previously made it past the interview stage, but did not take the offer when they could not even match his salary at The Times. He said he was unaware that his colleague at The Times, Vanessa Macdonald, had been selected for the job. “To me it was a continuation of the prior call. Sylvana Cristina had been appointed internally as editor, but she resigned in January 2008. I was given the job after the phone call from the PBS chairman.”

Toni Abela, lawyer for Saviour Balzan, insisted that his appointment had been a direct appointment. But Fenech’s lawyer Andrew Borg Cardona objected to this.

Fenech said he had ended his relationship with Saviour Balzan, both of whom had been part of the budding environmental movement of the 1980s, when the two worked together in the government environment department.

Balzan had left to teach at St Edward’s College.

“We formed part of BirdLife and Zghazagh ghall-Ambjent. We had attended together a conference by the European Greens in Florence with plans of starting a Green Party, but I was not an Alternattiva Demokratika co-founder.”

Saviour Balzan later contradicted this claim, saying there were records proving that Fenech was in fact an AD co-founder. “Is he ashamed to say this?” Balzan questioned in the court.

Questioned as to whether his dislike for Saviour Balzan led him to lobby against hosting Reporter, which had been airing for nine years, Fenech insisted that when he took over as editor he noted that the show had a poor audience.

“We paid him Lm200 for each programme. It was no longer viable. We had editorial issues with Balzan that created arguments with the Broadcasting Authority.”

Fenech claimed that only the Labour Party emblem was visible during the show’s opening, while the PN’s was missing. He added that Balzan had created a problem for PBS by inviting Glenn Bedingfield as an MEP candidate.

Fenech was then told by lawyer Toni Abela if there ever was a complaint from the Broadcasting Authority or any other body against Reporter. “No complaints were ever made against Balzan,” Fenech said. “But we used to see the recording and on various occasions had issues with the content.”

Abela interjected, saying that former TVM presenter Lou Bondì never had the same issues with Fenech, even when his programme was the subject of various BA complaints and was even found guilty. Fenech also admitted that under his tenure, Labour had complained some 20 times, mostly against Bondiplus.

Taking the stand, MaltaToday managing editor Saviour Balzan said that Reporter ran for nine years, and that it was only in the final year that Lm200 was being paid by PBS to a farmed-out company.

“When Fenech was head of news I offered to have the programme filmed at PBS to avoid expenses. But PBS objected, insisting that the programme must go on air through the farmed-out company.”

Balzan said he was approached by the PBS head of the editorial board, Prof. Joe Pirotta, who told him that he was under pressure not to involve political personalities in current affair programmes. “I abided by his wishes, with the understanding that other programmes like Bondiplus would follow suit, but this was not the case.

“Before the European elections I had invited Glenn Bedingfield, after replacing Joseph Muscat as MEP when the latter became leader of the Labour Party. I always informed PBS of my guests. It is absurd to say that I had a PL emblem in the opening score: the probability is that it was behind someone being interviewed.”

Finally, Balzan said that Fenech did everything to not invite or mention MaltaToday on the national broadcaster. He mentioned two particular examples: first when PBS attacked a MaltaToday story on tuna quotas, and failed to take a comment from a MaltaToday journalist. Fenech had argued, through a statement on PBS news, that MaltaToday was not credible because it had lost libel suits.

Secondly, during the 2013 elections a PBS journalist had requested to interview maltatoday.com.mt editor Matthew Vella on the election outcome after the newspaper correctly predicted the results, only for Fenech to order the PBS journalist to cancel the interview.

Balzan said that Fenech always had a problem with those he worked with, making special reference to Zghazagh ghall-Ambjent, Birdlife and the various newsrooms he had worked with. “Fenech believes he cannot be criticised and that anybody who criticises him should be sued for libel.”