The dictionary defines the verb ‘slap’ as: “hit or strike with the palm of the hand”. However, this commentary is about a worse kind of SLAPP. It does not physically strike your face but it strikes and undermines your right to know and your right to freely express yourself. More on this later.
You do remember when Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed the scandal of Pilatus Bank, the hospitals’ heist scandal and the power station scandal. A litany of scandals you would not have known about had Daphne not opened the cesspit floodgates of the government’s institutionalisation of corruption.
Other journalists continued her sterling work. This paper informed us that a criminal organisation operating within the government gave disability pensions to people who had no disability but, more importantly, had a vote.
Journalists also revealed that, up to now, the police courageously handled tadpoles but swam away from the big fish. We were also informed that full driving skills are not needed to get a driving licence. It is enough to befriend a minister and... you guessed it... to have a vote.
In the journalistic world we say that “news is about something that someone, somewhere does not want you to publish. The rest is advertising”.
It is easy to understand why the cabal of corrupt business persons and politicians spend so much on advertising but are ready to spend much more to weaponise the law and stop the news that bites them.
This weaponisation of the law to crush free speech is called SLAPP, an acronym for strategic lawsuits against public participation. Recently, The Shift News, also a victim of SLAPP actions by the government, organised a half-day conference to discuss this subject. I was invited to contribute my two cents’ worth.
SLAPP has many faces.
There is the international dimension. People with financial or political clout can drag a journalist or an activist or anyone who expresses an opinion to a court in the US or the UK. This would be a vexatious case. Business people or corrupt politicians do it not because the story or comment published was untrue. Most of the time they do it because the journalistic story was true and so they want to kill it.
The government is using citizens’ taxes to fight their own right to receive information- Fr Joe Borg
For example, the Joseph Muscat government connived with Henley and Partners (those who prostitute our citizenship) to SLAPP Daphne. They do it because they can afford the immense court expense overseas, knowing that no Maltese media house can afford it.
Because of such threats, various Maltese media houses had to take down or edit valid journalistic stories. When that happened, you were denied access to truthful information which you had the right to know.
Then there is the national version of SLAPP. A current example is The Shift News, which is fighting in court appeals by some 18, and counting, government departments. The Shift had to fight 40 cases in front of the data commissioner and the appeals tribunal.
Instead of giving the information you have a right to, the government directed its department to appeal before the courts the decisions in favour of The Shift by the commissioner. The government is doing this to exhaust the resources of the news website.
The government’s action means that it is using citizens’ taxes to fight their own right to receive information. It may seem that the victims of SLAPP are journalists and activists. But the real victims are all citizens.
This is a case where citizens should definitively not proffer the other cheek.