Spreading their wings: Where's Everybody in €2.6 million contract after White Rocks

As the company that produces some of the Public Broadcasting Authority’s flagship news and entertainment programmes, this is also the second revelation in the past week of the media house’s growth in public relations. WE is the main communications partner for the White Rocks consortium, which will be transferred land at Pembroke for the construction of a sports village.

WE partnered with EMCS Ltd, a consultancy firm run by Stefano Mallia, who was entrusted with parts of the PN’s European Parliament election campaign in 2009; and the Malta University Consultants and the Malta Institute of Management. The contract is for the ‘developing leaders for change and innovation in tourism’ project, which will offer high-level training in the tourism sector.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, whose portfolio includes both tourism and the editorial content of public broadcasting, said the consortium had been chosen using the MEAT system (most economically advantageous tender). The other tenderers, Logos and Misco, were eliminated in the second phase without the price of their offers being made public. EMCS tendered with a €2.59 million offer.

The presenters of Xarabank and Bondiplus, arguably the most popular of the Public Broadcasting Services programmes, continue spreading their wings in the arena of public relations. Peppi Azzopardi and Lou Bondì will also manage communications for the White Rocks consortium, whose sporting village has elicited questions about the value of the land being transferred to the real estate group.

Media expert and blogger Carmen Sammut has commented that the firewall between editorial content and the interests of commercial supporters has been “destroyed… While some media exponents claim that their survival depends on their ability to win PR contracts, I do not feel this is a good enough excuse.” Sammut says that Where’s Everybody producing a fair and balanced programme on the ramifications of government’s public land deal with the consortium they are representing, will be difficult. “They will also be in a quandary even if they decide not to touch the controversy that is building up.”

On his part, WE director and Bondiplus presenter Lou Bondì has told the Times that Where’s Everybody would run a story if an advertiser “was in the news”.

But it's the comments by PBS’s acting CEO Natalino Fenech – who is also head of news at the station – that raises eyebrows as to how the station will treat the media house's handling of both 'the news and the clients'. Indeed Fenech said that as long as Bondì or Azzopardi declare their perceived or actual conflict of interest, “then we would take it from there.”

The derelict White Rocks complex will be revived into a full-blown sports and leisure village, financed entirely by a UK consortium for €200 million at zero cost to the government for the construction, operation and maintenance of the facilities. It is being fully financed by White Rocks Holding Company Ltd and its financial partner Resolution Property plc, a major UK real estate fund.

The project is expected to cater for some 40 sporting disciplines, a rugby stadium and also 300 residential units – a point that is eliciting interest in the type of return the consortium will get for a piece of land believed to be worth €500 million, according to Times columnist Lino Spiteri.

In exchange for the construction, operation and maintenance to international standards of the sports village, the government will be giving the investor 221,000 square metres of coastal area.