PN complains use of ‘ward extension’ in PBS report on hospital corridor death

The Nationalist Party has filed a protest with the Broadcasting Authority against the Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), saying that the station was stifling Opposition’s message and acting as a gatekeeper for the government.

“During Wednesday's new bulletin, PBS said that an elderly man had died in a ‘ward extension’, rather than a ‘corridor’. This is untrue, and it is clear that the phrase was used to pass the government’s message on and hide and manipulate facts,” the PN said in a letter to PBS head of news Reno Bugeja and BA chief executive Pierre Cassar, referring to a news item on the death of a patient in a Mater Dei corridor being used as part of its wards.

The hospital's overcrowding has meant that patients are also being kept inside the hospital corridors.

The PN maintained that the elderly man had died in the corridor, and that the Opposition’s intervention in parliament last night was specifically about the undignified way patients were being treated at Mater Dei.

The PN complained that PBS had reported the several interruptions that took place during the parliamentary sitting, when it was government ministers who were "shouting, insulting and not allowing members of the Opposition to speak... The PBS report was not factual and it was only aimed at pushing the government’s message. This is unacceptable from the national broadcaster,” the PN said.