THE TRAVESTY CONTINUES: TIMES OF MALTA FABRICATES WHILE EU PAYS IT TO “FACT-CHECK”

By Joe Vella

The liberal Times of Malta has received more generous European grants to fact-check news in Malta until 2028. These funds supposedly flow from MedDMO, the Mediterranean Digital Media Observatory. The project claims to detect, analyse and counter disinformation. Funding originates from the European Commission under the guise of its Digital Europe Programme. This turns the Times of Malta into a political weapon. It champions the liberal views of the European Commission.

This occurs while the Times holds the lion’s share of Malta’s newspaper market. Its website dominates online news. It spreads tentacles across new media. No independent body fact-checks this massive newspaper. Instead, the EU pays it to police others. This is a travesty. It is another scam foisted on the Maltese people.

As this blog has shown over the years, nobody fabricates news as much as the Times of Malta, from telling readers that the sea urchins will multiply and recover in two years – three years later many of our reefs are still barren – to telling us a few days ago that all the Moroccan invaders left Ceuta and returned to Morocco. Good boys indeed, these Moroccan illegals! The newspaper uses “fact checking” to champion illegal immigration by attacking its opponents.

On Covid, it was the mouthpiece of the American Fauci, the man who corrupted science into a tool for pharmaceutical exploitation at the expense of an unsuspecting public. Only this blog raised the troubling questions in Malta when the anti-Covid vaccines were imported in haste.

A long-running pattern in the Times involves selective reporting on political scandals. The paper has amplified certain corruption stories while soft-pedalling others that might damage preferred narratives. Another involves commercial influence. Sponsored content has sat alongside critical journalism on the same firms, blurring lines and raising questions of integrity. A third concerns internal decisions. A tribunal ruled a journalist’s dismissal process biased and lacking proof, highlighting uneven standards inside the newsroom.

These are not isolated slips. They form a pattern. The Times presents itself as independent. Yet EU money bolsters its fact-checking arm. The same organisation that shapes public opinion receives public funds to label opposing views as false. The European Union has become a force for political destruction. It suppresses opposing views as unfounded. Fact-checking hubs such as MedDMO serve this purpose. They do not foster open debate. They enforce orthodoxy. In Malta the result is clear. The dominant newspaper gains resources and authority. Dissenting voices, from MPs to news that don’t support the Times’ narrative, face greater scrutiny.

Maltese citizens deserve better. True fact-checking requires independence from both political power and market dominance. EU grants to the largest player achieve the opposite. They entrench one viewpoint. They label alternatives as dangerous. This is not defence of truth. It is control dressed as virtue. The scam continues. The public pays the price.