It is very clear at this stage that the Labour government, with its myopic, insular and populist ideology, is reducing the debate about protecting journalism into a redundant discussion about higher penalties for punching a journalist.
Journalists are clearly falling into this trap.
There is no objection to increasing penalties for punching journalists, and clearly journalists support this — but this is not about protecting journalists.
The Labour government is turning this issue into a populist theatre so as to exploit the talking point that it is protecting journalists.
In reality, Labour has decimated the free press in Malta.
A journalistic reform in Malta should require the government to enforce and fulfil all its obligations under the EU Media Freedom Act — something the Labour government is ostensibly trying to resist.
Secondly, the Labour government should introduce symmetry in civil litigation.
These would be reforms that would actually help the free press and journalists.
Meanwhile, while Labour is indulging in its populist pretences that it is protecting journalists, we remain entrapped with multiple SLAPP actions and legal warfare which will only increase in the coming years because the laws allow for extended abuse. All the while, the government issues millions of Euros every year to our competitors and for its propaganda and effectively acts as a commercial competitor to a press outlet like ours.
There is no illusion as to what the government is doing. It has a populist facade which looks glamorous and neat, but underneath it is an actually brutal and very illiberal reality.
Website Editor
Historian and Publisher
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