Here's the story those two punks, Toni Abela and Saviour Balzan, are hoping you've forgotten

Funny how Gino Cauchi, Toni Abela and their Skip Party said nothing at the time. Oh, but just a minute! Toni Abela DID say quite a lot at the time. He wrote to PBS, wearing his hat as Saviour Balzan’s lawyer and leaving his Labour Party deputy leader hat on standby, to say that his client was surprised to see that news of how much he was paid entered the public domain (even though it was public money) because in hs view that information is confidential.

And no, Toni Abela didn’t then put on his Labour Party hat to protest to the Broadcasting Authority because Saviour takes public money for a current affairs programme on PBS while spewing lanzit all over the prime minister (because he isn’t John Dalli) and the Nationalist Party, or for engaging the legal services of the Labour Party’s deputy leader.

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The Sunday Times
12th July 2009

SAVIOUR BALZAN CALLS FOR PROBE AFTER €88K PUBLIC FUND HANDOUT EXPOSED

Saviour Balzan, presenter of the TV programme Reporter and editor of Malta Today, has demanded that PBS launches an inquiry after The Sunday Times revealed that his 10-minute daily programme received over €88,000 in one year from the government’s Public Service Obligation (PSO) fund.

In a letter to PBS chairman Clare Thake Vassallo, Mr Balzan’s lawyer, Toni Abela, said his client was “surprised” when he saw The Sunday Times report of June 28 and “cannot understand” how “confidential information” found its way into the newspaper.

Reporter, aired on PBS five days a week and produced by Mediatoday, which is co-owned by Mr Balzan, received 68 per cent of PBS’s €130,000 PSO allocation for current affairs and discussion programmes from October 2007 to September 2008.

In a reply to a parliamentary question on July 3, Culture Minister Dolores Cristina – whose ministry decides which programmes should qualify for the contribution following a list submitted by PBS – revealed that Mr Balzan’s programme received a further €88,540 from the PSO in 2008/2009.

The PSO fund, which totals €1.1 million, is provided by the government to ensure that programmes with a cultural, educational or social orientation are broadcast even though they do not necessarily justify their cost through advertising revenue.

Mediatoday has applied to air Reporter on next season’s PBS television schedule. According to sources, the programmes for a given week are filmed together in one session and weekly production costs, described as “low level and studio-based”, do not exceed €800.

Dr Abela also wrote in the letter: “Apart from breaching the Data Protection Act, which PBS normally cites whenever it is asked about payment to contractors and private production houses, the answer has always been that this information is of a commercial nature and should never be divulged. The contrary happened in this case.”

The letter, which was copied to the Culture Ministry and the Data Protection Commissioner, said the way things had evolved did no good to PBS or the national station’s clients.

However, when contacted yesterday, chairman Ms Thake Vassallo said that the information revealed by The Sunday Times was in the public interest and there was no breach of data protection.

Ms Thake Vassallo said: “It’s not confidential information. The public should know where public funds go, it’s no secret. We always show what we spend on each genre… it’s been put on the table in Parliament a number of times.

When asked if there would be an investigation, she said: “The spend of public funds is public information, it’s not confidential, so it’s not a big issue.”

Mediatoday’s newspaper Malta Today, edited by Mr Balzan, was itself behind a story in November 2005 which quoted a confidential report to show the cost of Where’s Everybody’s flagship programmes – which are aired on PBS.

When Where’s Everybody’s directors wrote a letter to explain their side of the story, it was accompanied by an editor’s note which read: “Malta Today’s report is in the public interest and in accordance with true investigative journalism on everything… The origin of these funds are (sic) from taxpayers’ money.”

Other programmes which received significant sums from the PSO for the 2008/2009 season include Bijografiji produced by Where’s Everybody, which got €91,234; Tini5 produced by Dee Media, which got €83,615; and D produced by Claire Agius, which got €81,524.