The untouchables in Malta: the media and the Caruana Galizias

Lovin Malta carried another article, this time round by Ana Tortell, quoting Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR). Tortell states that “The MFRR acknowledged that it was not known who was behind the fake websites but pointed the finger towards blogger Simon Mercieca”. My question here is how can MFRR first state that the blogger is not known and then point its finger at Simon Mercieca for fabricating these media spoofs!

Again Tortell quotes MFRR as stating that Simon Mercieca is “accused of ‘feeding the frenzy’ by making false claims about a number of Maltese journalists and activists”. My questions to MFRR are two.

1. If MFRR has a sense of ethics, it should first have got in touch with me to get my viewpoint too. And the same goes for Lovin Malta, as other journalist had done.
2. MFRR should also understand – but probably it has not been told – that I make no false claims. I simply ANALYSE what journalists and activitists themselves claim as being truths. In analysing their writing, I show that what they are writing is either a falsehood or an adulterated fact to feed their own political agenda.

This goes to show how totally irresponsible this EU organization is, convincing me even more why Britain has left the EU.

The fact is that MFRR does not bring a jot of evidence except that it simply repeats what Manuel Delia and his wife have alleged about my legitimate questions. It should be noted that at no point did I “claim” that Manuel Delia get paid 30,000 per year to be its executive officer and that the civil society movement rents offices from Delia’s wife. What I did was to question these two points and I had only the courtesy of a reply only from Manuel Delia’s wife which I duly published online.

The fact that Manuel Delia claims that he has been receiving WhatsApp messages from unknown numbers abroad telling him to stop criticising Mercieca does not mean that I am behind them. I have better things to do. Assuming that he did get such messages, I fail to see the relevance of this hoo-ha, I too receive a number of messages which are from locals and others who are simply the result of a social media gone wild and uncontrollable in its behaviour. That does not give anybody the right to misinterpret and misinform others when their allegations cannot be proven. What I write, I can prove. That is my mantra.

Ms. Tortell continues to state that MFRR continued to expose what they claim “to be falsities expressed by Mercieca, including the bloggers attempt to taint the reputation of Matthew Xuereb…”. Matthew Xuereb knows perfectly well that I acted correctly in asking him whether he was behind a fake profile, which was using the domain of the Times of Malta. I have proof of all this if we go to court.

Meanwhile, I reported the cases of fake profiles to the police to which the police have replied to me.

I am also accused by the Media Freedom Rapid Response, that I am targeting the Caruana Galizia’s family by asserting that they were in possession of a non-PDF electronic version of the report of the public inquiry, “thus allegedly allowing them to make changes to their advantage the statement added”. Again this is not quite correct. The point here is how did they know that pages were missing which incidentally they only considered one to be relevant and the other two irrelevant? These are the untouchables.

Perhaps, MFRR should also know that this inquiry has no judicial or legal standing and was basically set up to appease the Caruana Galizia family at the instigation of Manuel Delia and his activists. The result now is that the inquiry is being officially challenged in our court by a private citizen, who previously was a minister of justice as well as a criminal lawyer, on the grounds that the inquiry is unconstitutional.

If MFRR is disposed to just follow what it is being fed by whoever considers itself to be the rectitude of honesty without even having an English translation of the contents of my articles, which are often in Maltese, then they are on the wrong tracks.

If a section of the media and the Caruana Galizia family feel affronted by my articles, they should start accepting to face reality and the truth.