The impact of a recent court ruling on the Broadcasting Authority’s role in ensuring impartiality in the broadcast media could extend beyond party-owned stations to those run by the Church or other civic organisations, according to a former Broadcasting Authority CEO. The ruling was made in an appeal against a case instituted by the Nationalist Party which found that the Broadcasting Authority and PBS had failed to ensure impartiality in two separate incidents. The original court sentence had been decided in the PN’s favour last July, with the Constitutional Court confirming the decision last week. In their ruling, judges Mark Chetcuti, Giannino Caruana Demajo and Anthony Ellul said the obligation towards impartiality was “not limited to a situation where a monopoly is present [and] applies in all broadcast services in Malta, both public and private”. Pierre Cassar, who was the BA CEO between 2009 and 2016, told Times of Malta that impartiality does not only refer to partisan balance but also to a broader range of social and political issues. Malta’s constitution binds the Broadcasting Authority to ensure impartiality “in respect of matters of political or industrial...
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