The Nationalist Party's news portal has been ordered to publish a statement issued by blogger and civil society activist Manuel Delia in reply to a story wherein Net News claimed that Mr Delia had been proved a liar.
The whole issue had stemmed from a story posted on his Truth Be Told blog, titled “Mrs Adrian Delia’s uncle is first to get licence to grow cannabis”.
That post had prompted a reply by Dr Delia’s lawyer duly published three days later by way of right of reply under the heading, “PN’s lawyer Vincent Galea replies on cannabis cultivation story”.
Following that publication, NetNews had featured another report claiming that the PN was and still is against cannabis cultivation in Malta, “il-blogger Manuel Delia imgiddeb”.
In his original blog post, Mr Delia had stated that the PN parliamentary group had voted in favour of cannabis cultivation under pressure by the party leader who allegedly had a conflict of interest on the matter, the PN media story ran.
Mr Delia had immediately retorted to that story, demanding a right of reply, which was, however, refused, thereby prompting him to seek recourse before the courts.
During proceedings instituted against editor Robert Cremona and former programmes manager at Net TV, Fabian Demicoli, former Media.Link executive chairman, Pierre Portelli, had testified, stating that he had taken the decision not to allow Mr Delia’s right of reply “since he had not known whether Manuel Delia was acting as scriptwriter on behalf of some other client or not”.
The court, presided over by Magistrate Rachel Montebello, handing down judgment on Wednesday, observed that nowhere in Manuel Delia’s blog had there been a reference to how the parliamentary group had effectively voted.
“Evidently, the only reference made by the applicant in his blog of July 29, 2018 in this regard was a reference to the leader of the Opposition’s alleged enthusiasm for the legislation and how the parliamentary group discussions had been cut short by the Opposition Leader, but no more than that.”
The court declared that the applicant’s right of reply was justified at law.
Both respondents were responsible for the publication of that reply and consequently were to shoulder responsibility for failure to publish it, said the Court, stating that there was “a clear lack of justification for their continuous refusal to do so”.
Consequently, the Court ordered the PN media to publish “within two days” the right of reply the blogger had written in 2018 on both netnews.com.mt and on its TV news bulletin, giving it the same prominence as the original story.
The court also imposed a joint penalty of €500 upon both respondents.
Lawyer Andrew Borg Cardona assisted the applicant.