Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1107757
25 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 APRIL 2019 OPINION ence to Manuel Delia's 'Truth be Told' blog; and Caroline Muscat's Shift News. Did RWB run any back- ground checks on either of those two names? I somehow doubt it, because if they did, they would have realised they were talking to: a) the former, long-time right-hand man of Nationalist minister Austin Gatt, who has a blatant vested interest in seeing the present administration dethroned, and; b) a former campaign manager of the Nationalist Party, who is now quoted as an 'independ- ent, unbiased media source' in the in aternational press. In the case of Manuel Delia, they would also have found that his only past experience in journalism – before sud- denly metamorphosing into a blogger in November 2017 – was having ghost-written a few opinion articles for Adrian Delia in The Times, against payment, ahead of the 2017 election. Onto rule number 2: verify claims through independent confirmation. A lot of claims were made in that report, you know. Apparently, we Maltese journalists are all in fear for our lives. Apparently, the situ- ation here is more alarming than Mongolia, Haiti, Guyana, and Burkina Faso…. Who did they speak to, I wonder, to confirm any of that? Of course, I can under- stand how two former PN officials would have an interest in portraying 'Malta under Labour' in those terms. (Truth be told… you'd have to be deaf, dumb, blind and downright comatose not to immediately see that, even at a glance.) But the 'R' in RWB stands for 'Reporters'; and last I looked, reporters have an obliga- tion to seek confirmation of single-source (and let's face it, outrageous) claims. So where did they seek their confirma- tion from, before rushing to print with the first allegation they heard? It can't have been the Insti- tute of Maltese Journalists, because they've just come out with a statement rebutting some of those claims. (Which reminds me: didn't it occur to RWB that the IGM might actually be a good place to start, if they wanted to get an idea of the real state of Maltese journalism? I mean, they're only the official representa- tives of the entire profession, you know…) And they don't seem to have spoken to any of other local media, either. Allied Newspa- pers, The Malta Independent, MaltaToday, LovinMalta, and maybe a few others might have had a thing or two say, about RWB's astonishing asser- tion that around 90% of the mainstream media is 'directly owned by the political par- ties'… The bottom line, however, is that there is almost nothing factual about RWB's report at all. Even its argument (about the only thing they almost got right) that "abusive judicial proceedings [are] designed to gag investigative report- ers by draining their financial resources" has to be put into its proper context. The threat exists, yes: but it emanates from foreign juris- dictions (mainly the UK) over which Malta has no legislative control. If RWB really wants to be helpful, it could suggest ways in which the Maltese Parliament can legislate to stop companies from suing Maltese journalists in foreign countries. But the RWB obviously can't do that – because it's impossi- ble – so instead they paint out the situation to look like a case of 'LOCAL abusive judicial proceedings'… …and that's just downright dishonest. The situation re- garding abusive libel in Malta has evolved in very much the opposite direction. Criminal li- bel has, in fact, been abolished in this country. It is no longer possible for political and in- dustrial giants to simply pum- mel a newspaper into silence with criminal lawsuits – as happened to both myself and this newspaper over the tuna- laundering issue: in 2007/8, please note, when Malta had been already a member of the EU for over three years. Yet neither this, nor the abo- lition of stage and film censor- ship, obscenity and blasphemy laws – nor even the enactment of hate-speech legislation, for that matter – gets even the slightest mention, in a report that is supposed to be about 'the state of freedom of expres- sion in Malta'. And it's hardly surprising, is it? That is precisely the sort of amateur nonsense you are likely to get, when you simply throw all known journalistic rules and protocols out of the window, and then go on to do a spot of 'journalism'. But at least, it does answer the question I asked in the opening sentence. Who needs an epitaph, anyway… when you can just nail the RWB report to the headstone of journalism's grave? Funny, isn't it, that a nation would lose trust in a media sector that is evidently more concerned with playground battle-tactics, than with getting on with the business of reporting on the state of the country? The situation regarding abusive libel in Malta has evolved in very much the opposite direction. Criminal libel has, in fact, been abolished in this country. It is no longer possible for political and industrial giants to simply pummel a newspaper into silence with criminal lawsuits – as happened to both myself and this newspaper over the tuna- laundering issue: in 2007/8, please note, when Malta had been already a member of the EU for over three years