Power to the people through information

In an interesting medley of issues related to the working of our law courts, Michael Falzon (January 4) lists a number of his complaints. It was a valiant attempt by an architect to plumb the unfathomable depths of the forensic mind. He replies to José Herrera's defence of the courts' right to ban publication of proceedings.

The issue goes far beyond the right of journalists to publish and be damned as he invites newspaper editors to do at the next opportunity. The publicity of any trial is a safeguard to the parties or the accused and to third parties, the public. While most accused persons would prefer to avoid publicity, a creeping secrecy of trials would become a menace to others and a serious threat to their right to a fair trial.

Beyond this there is now a recognised right to freedom of information. The assumption must be a general right to know, restricted only on justifiable grounds. This not only gives citizens the ability to have a mental picture of the way justice is administered in their country but creates a permanent scrutiny mechanism on all powers of the state. Information is power: information to the people.

Clearly there are instances when the revelation of the identity of the accused would reveal the identity of the victim heaping further violence on that already sustained. Incest prosecutions come first to mind. However, there have been a number of recent cases where the ban on publication has appeared to be unjustified. Protecting the reputation of professionals and of successful businessmen while having no regard to those of commoners smells of corporate loyalty and abuse of judicial discretion.

Perhaps it is time that the matter is made subject to strict regulation as well as review by the Commission for the Administration of Justice. Every ban on publication, and not only those which happen to be queried by journalists and the public, should be reviewed thus making judges and magistrates more keenly aware of the exceptional nature of the exercise of discretion.

Curiously Mr Falzon then proceeds to recount a number of anecdotes to illustrate his easily justifiable thesis that the law is an ass particularly in the matter of the interpretation of our libel laws. Having been at the receiving end for many years myself I am delighted to find myself in complete harmony with him on this.

What I find amusing is that he refers to many pre-1987 aberrations and continues to lament the state of the law in what appears to be yet another exercise in Bundyism. Was he not a government minister, an MP and a candidate in the EP elections in the interim? He can hardly call for our sympathy in his lament that the courts are part of Il-pajjiz ta' Mickey Mouse (Mickey Mouse country) after all these years at the helm. If he declares his impotence in the matter, the rest of us can only be paralysed in horror.

However, if his plaintive call for reform is part of a campaign I would be very glad to join. I am still smarting from the violence of being fined Lm700 for the outrage of describing a political part-time farmer's second abode as a villa. I have been prosecuted for publishing the fact that a former Maltese Minister of Justice had been found guilty of a crime in Italy. The Lm900 paid by the newspaper I founded to a former PN guru for having published a report obtained from the police public relations officer remains an act of state terrorism in my book.

The effect of the blizzard of libel suits which finally brought down Alternattiva adds to the many other absurd decisions which continue to hamper investigative journalism in Malta. It is a structural violence daily perpetrated not only on journalists but also on the public which never comes to know of the reports suppressed by cautious editors made apprehensive of the cost and waste of time they have suffered before.

Omission is the ultimate killer. The most astute of readers is defeated by what he or she is not told. Journalism, the fourth estate, becomes a menace through its impotence. In being prevented from telling the whole truth it inevitably creates the illusion that what is published is the whole truth. The failure of our libel laws is also the failure of our political system. It is a matter far more serious than the right of journalists to publish and be damned.

Mr Falzon's own omission in dealing with the right to freedom of expression in Malta is nothing short of remarkable. While appearing to be keenly aware of the indignities he has suffered himself, he altogether misses the structural violence of the broadcasting system he has sustained through his participation as a prominent government politician for the past 17 years.

Nothing is more obscenely obvious than the efforts made by the PN and MLP to exclude all others from access to the media. It took victory in a constitutional court to force them to allow Alternattiva Demokratika a presence by right in political broadcasts. Interpreting the judgment as restrictively as possible, they reduced this right to a proportion of airtime related to votes polled in the previous election. By right the Greens were allowed 60 seconds per month. They were automatically excluded for years from any debate with the other political parties.

The advent of political party television stations made an absurd situation simply ludicrous. The Broadcasting Authority, on which only nominees of the other parties sit, has maintained a policy in violation of the most basic interpretation of the Constitution, that balance in broadcasting is produced by allowing the PN and the MLP to "balance each other out" through untrammelled broadcasting.

Following the EP elections no schedule for political party broadcasting has been established. With 9.3 per cent of the vote, the Greens appear to have forfeited also their 60 seconds per month. Responding to a call for applications for the issue of a terrestrial television broadcasting licence, the Greens appear to have stymied the whole process for commercial applicants. No significant progress has been registered for 18 months.

In the meantime a White Paper published by the current PN government on digital broadcasting proposes a moratorium on the issue of new licences to leave the existing operators in possession of the field once the transition to digital broadcasting is launched. It feels like still more structural violence.

From where I stand, it also erodes Mr Falzon's credentials to pontificate on the right to freedom of expression as does the almost hermetic exclusion of Greens from Net TV since the EU referendum in 2003. It all seems like a more sophisticated version of the pre-1987 structural violence in broadcasting. It is the naked and unabashed exercise of power and apparently with a total absence of insight by the perpetrators.

Burdening Dr Herrera with the sins of his Labour fathers and claiming the laurels for resisting the ancient onslaught may seem like a laudable exercise to a PN veteran. To Greens is it a boring performance of the pot calling the kettle black. Some of us have faced the sooty mess for 30 years without a break. It is time for a change for the better.

Dr Vassallo is chairman of Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party.

harry.vassallo@alternattiva.org.mt