Two MediaToday editors have been ordered to pay €2,000 in moral damages over defamatory articles linking a security consultant to leaks of confidential information from the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder probe.
John Muscat filed separate libel suits against MaltaToday editor Saviour Balzan and Illum editor Albert Gauci Cunningham over two stories published in October 2018.
The stories claimed that investigators were purposely feeding misleading information “to weed out leaks” in the ongoing magisterial inquiry, implying that three court-appointed experts, among them Muscat, were responsible for leaking sensitive information to international media and people in politics.
The Illum online article implied that Muscat, appointed as security consultant by the inquiring magistrate, had pocketed a substantial sum of money.
When testifying in court, Balzan expressly excluded that he had been referring to Muscat as a suspected source of the leaks, claiming that he had based his writing upon information obtained through police sources.
In his story, Balzan had referred to Muscat as the brother of “former PN campaign manager now The Shift journalist Caroline Muscat,” and later testified that the applicant’s sister was “biased and highly prejudiced” with a “clear political agenda.”
When delivering judgment on Monday, Magistrate Rachel Montebello, declared that irrespective of what Balzan had intended and believed or not, the link between the applicant and the leaks was “manifest.”
The court said the publications tarnished the applicant’s reputation, leading readers to view him as untrustworthy and discrediting him in the performance of his court-assigned task that in itself called for maximum confidentiality.
The allegations were neither true nor did they constitute fair comment.
Nor was there a public interest in publishing sensitive information from ongoing criminal investigations, said Magistrate Rachel Montebello.
In this case it was in the public interest to safeguard the integrity of the ongoing investigations and criminal process, over and above the right to information and freedom of expression.
Information obtained by the editor about the names of court experts, magisterial orders, personal data and call logs gathered as evidence, were not “privileged communication” said the court.
Unlike the murder itself, the existence of leaks, official police communication and faithful, accurate and live reporting of the court cases, revealing the names of confidentially-appointed court experts was not a matter of public interest, concluded the magistrate, declaring both publications defamatory and ordering each editor to pay €1,000 in moral damages to Muscat.
Lawyer Joseph Zammit Maempel assisted the applicant.