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18 maltatoday EXECUTIVE EDITOR Matthew Vella MANAGING EDITOR Saviour Balzan Letters to the Editor, MaltaToday, Vjal ir-Rihan, San Gwann SGN 9016 E-mail: dailynews@mediatoday.com.mt Letters must be concise, no pen names accepted, include full name and address maltatoday | SUNDAY • 28 OCTOBER 2018 28 October 2008 Angry farmers confront Pullicino RURAL Affairs Minister George Pullicino was confronted yesterday evening by angry farmers from the 12th District at a 'top- secret' meeting at the Nationalist Party club in Mgarr, Malta. This meeting was the third scheduled between farmers and the Ministry, but – ac- cording to the farmers – the only one for which the minister actually showed up. MaltaToday is reliably informed that the farmers were incensed at various problems, including delays in the processing of EU subsidies, the increase in water tariffs, the proposed new water meters, and various dif- ficulties when selling their products on the market. At one point, when the talk turned to the situation at the Pitkalija (vegetable market), Pullicino was heard telling the farmers: "Don't let them continue ripping you off" – a reference to the same issue of middlemen at the Pitkalija, brought up on Sunday by Opposition leader Joseph Muscat. The meeting started shortly after 6 pm – an hour earlier than originally planned, having been rescheduled by the Resources and Rural Affairs Minister George Pullicino this morning. But although the meeting was held in a public venue, and this newspaper was invited to send a journalist by the farm- ers' themselves, as soon as a MaltaToday journalist tried to walk into the club he was approached summarily by Ministry Com- munications' Coordinator, Keith Galea, and told that he could not attend the meeting as it was "not open to the public". "This is an informal meeting. I don't know why you have taken the trouble to turn up," Galea said. It is not clear whom Galea was represent- ing at that point: the government of Malta which employs him, or the Nationalist party which administers the PN club in question. In any case, farmers were visibly quite agitated during the meeting, with various hand gesticulations and high-pitched voices directed at the hapless minister. It was third time lucky for Mgarr farmers, after Pullicino had failed to attend two con- secutive appointments in Mgarr, increasing the anger of the farming community at the Rural Affairs Minister. "After he did not turn up for the second meeting, we thought that he was going to take us for a ride," said an angry farmer who spoke to MaltaToday on condition of ano- nymity. However, ministry official Ray Bezzina hotly denied that Pullicino had avoided meeting the farmers on two separate occa- sions. MaltaToday 10 years ago Quote of the Week A gagging order is a gagging order Editorial ''It is not right that a trial by media takes place on an attempted homicide case that could end up in a trial by jury'' Magistrate Joseph Mifsud on the Liam Debono Case THERE seems to be a contradiction in public responses to the court ban on Friday's edition of Xarabank. The talk show, hosted by Peppi Azzopardi, was scheduled to feature an interview with 17-year-old Liam Debono: accused of the attempted murder of police officer Simon Schembri, who lost his arm in a harrowing hit-and-run incident. Understandably, the editorial decision on Xarabank's part was met with public consternation. It is a decision that probes a traditional grey area within the media as a whole: Debono is facing criminal charges that may later result in a trial by jury; and while there are no hard and fast rules on how the media should approach suspects in seri- ous criminal cases, any newspaper or media organisation should know from experience that it is always a risky path to tread. In such cases, the suspect's rights have to be offset by the State's ability to adminis- ter justice. The balancing act is not always straightforward; but traditionally, the ac- cepted approach has always been to limit reportage strictly to what emerges from the judicial proceedings themselves. Peppi Azzopardi has defended his sched- uled interview by arguing that it was sub- stantively unrelated to the ongoing trial. But whether or not Debono spoke about the case itself, it remains a fact that public interest only exists because of the charges against Debono. Besides, one cannot ignore the basic jour- nalistic principle of covering both sides of any given story. If Liam Debono is to be given celebrity treatment by a talk-show, it is understandable that his alleged victim would demand equal airtime, as is his right. Then again, there is also the problem of how Azzopardi treats his interviewees – many a time placing them on a platform of false equivalence that lacks any sort of edito- rial or critical appraisal of the subjects he deals with. But the real issue does not concern the propriety or otherwise of the scheduled pro- gramme; it is whether the law courts should have the power to prevent it from taking place. Even if one disagrees with Azzopardi's approach, the magistrate's decision does indeed raise uncomfortable questions about press freedoms in Malta. Mifsud's ruling is, effectively, a gagging order on Xarabank. Hence the contradiction alluded to earlier: it seems that many people have welcomed a gagging order on the media on this oc- casion… though they had protested about similar attempts when they took the form of 'garnishee orders' in libel cases. Not only are the effects the same in both cases, but the legal mechanisms are similar too. Though Schembri's legal team only de- manded equal airtime, and for the unedited footage of the interview to be presented in the criminal case as evidence, Magistrate Joe Mifsud went several steps further in his judgment. He invoked Article 517 of the Criminal Code, which allows a Criminal Court to ban any publication related to an ongoing criminal case, without the need to justify its decision. More worryingly, the Attorney General actively requested the court to use its powers in Article 517 of the Criminal Code. "Once it is unfortunate that the journalistic eth- ics of yesteryear has all but finished, maybe it is time for the legislator to do what the British did 37 years ago, and formally cen- sor what today is in the realm of journalistic ethics and auto-censorship," the AG's office said, referring to the UK's 1981 Contempt of Court Act that bans publication of material that can influence pending criminal accusa- tions. This raises issues that go well beyond the individual case to which this law has been applied. It is manifestly dangerous that the Attorney General wants a law that will regu- late press ethics, in defiance of the current, declared policy of media self-regulation. One can understand concerns with regulating the press – in fact there are ongoing discus- sions in this regard, involving the possible creation of a media ombudsman. But this is very different from what the AG appears to be proposing. Any law that can unilaterally close down an episode of Xarabank, can also be exploited to clamp down on any public expression of any kind. That such a law even exists in our statute books is worrying enough; but that a court would apply it, even when the plaintiffs do not demand it, at the request of an AG who seems keen on 'regulating' the free press… this is altogether more serious than Xara- bank's lack of editorial judgment in this case. This is not to say that there should be no instances where the law courts can enforce such an order. Arguably, the court can issue a ban to protect the accused from further trial by media, or due to possible influence on a jury, and even to avoid self-incrimi- nation. But it is clear that the language of Article 517, at least in the way Magistrate Mifsud was motivated in his decree, does not protect media enough from gagging strate- gies. If nothing else, it is discriminatory against subsections of the media: had this interview been aired on YouTube or Vimeo, for instance, it might not have been so easily stopped by a Maltese court. Lastly, it must be said that much of this could have been avoided, had TVM em- ployed an enlightened editorial stance on ratings-grabbing shows like Xarabank. As a national broadcaster, TVM also has to show foresight, integrity, and respect for the gen- eral public. This, too, is part of the 'self-regulation' that Maltese media have fought for, and which is now under direct threat.