Media Release 08/16
Appointment of Chief Executive
for the Broadcasting Authority
Following the decision of the present Chief Executive of the Broadcasting Authority, Mr Pierre Cassar, to relinquish his post to take up a full-time post at the University of Malta, the Broadcasting Authority has appointed Dr Joanna Spiteri as its new Chief Executive.
In 1998 Ms Joanna Spiteri was conferred a BA (Hons) degree in Communication Studies by the University of Malta with her main dissertation focusing on the changes in Maltese print journalism since the eighties. After obtaining her first degree, she worked as a journalist at Public Broadcasting Services Ltd. newsroom producing local and foreign features for television and radio. She also covered Parliamentary sittings. During the two years at PBS Ltd. she presented and produced current affairs programmes on TVM and Radju Malta, two of which had won the Broadcasting Authority’s Programme Awards. She produced and presented a series of programmes on Channel 12 focusing on the work done by voluntary organisations and adult learning. In 1999 she joined the Broadcasting Authority as a Supervisor in the Programme Monitoring Department. During the tenure of this post, she read for a Master’s Degree in Arts at the University of Malta focusing her research on the portrayal of gender issues in news bulletins. Her interest in gender issues led the Authority to appoint her as a Chairperson of the Broadcasting Authority’s Equality Committee in order to liaise gender issues at her workplace with the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality. In 2004 she drafted the Broadcasting Authority Guidelines on Gender Equality and Gender Portrayal in the Media. She was involved in a number of projects with regard to gender and the media including the co-ordination of an EU project known as “Portraying Politics: a Toolkit on Gender and Television” and co-coordinating the staff at the Broadcasting Authority to assist the National Coordinator, Dr Brenda Murphy, in the Global Media Monitoring Project. In 2001 she attended a workshop within the news department at the Irish Public Broadcasting Service, RTÉ. This work is the result of her research on news and gender issues.
She followed her studies by reading for a Ph.D. with the University of Sterling in Scotland where she studied news impartiality in the Maltese TV broadcasting scenario, the role of the public service broadcaster and the role of the Broadcasting Authority in achieving impartiality on the television broadcasting media.
Mario Axiak
Head Research & Communications
27th October 2016