Authority 'suspended' fine after PBS carried PN reply, three months late

A penalty incurred by PBS for failing to publish a right of reply by the Nationalist Party, was suspended by the Broadcasting Authority when the reply was published, albeit three months late, a court heard on Tuesday.

The decision was revealed by a BA official in a court case instituted by the Nationalist Party, which is claiming that its rights were breached by the public broadcaster’s political bias and propaganda.

During another hearing on Friday, the court heard how PBS had ignored a direction by the Broadcasting Authority for publication of the PN’s right of reply over an issue concerning the newly inaugurated Marsa flyover project.

An interview aired during the PBS show TVAM had been deemed as “rather extensive and may have amounted to propaganda,” the Authority had declared.

But it took a second complaint by the PN, followed by a €4,660 penalty by the Authority, for that direction to be implemented by PBS, three months after the party’s initial complaint.

When summoned back to the witness stand on Tuesday, PBS executive chairman Mark Sammut mentioned that that penalty had been somehow “cancelled.”

That information prompted PN lawyers Paul Borg Olivier and Francis Zammit...