The lion’s share of a supplement in the Labour Party’s newspaper on Sunday was taken up by government adverts, a situation that could see ministers fall foul of the Standards Commissioner’s recent guidelines.

The only content of KullĦadd's “special” supplement, celebrating two years of Prime Minister Robert Abela’s premiership and the Labour government’s work from 2020, was a list of “24 records in 24 months”. 

Of its 32 pages, 28 were state adverts, extolling the achievements of ministries and entities.

Some of the adverts that funded the PL’s publication were double-page spreads. The Senior Citizens Ministry took out four full pages.

Only three ministries – tourism, foreign affairs and finance – did not support the publication and trumpet their own accomplishments.

“This was a special supplement, as other private newspapers issued many times in the past, and they asked for government adverts,” a spokesperson for the Office of the Prime Minister said, adding it was looking into the matter. 

The OPM was asked for an explanation and whether this was considered out of line, given the recent guidelines by the Standards Commissioner and recommendations by the Daphne Caruana Galizia Inquiry report to ensure government advertising in the media was distributed fairly.

Last August, Standards Commissioner George Hyzler published the new guidelines to ensure government adverts and promotional material were factually correct. 

The commissioner also said that government-sponsored publications should indicate they were publicly funded for the sake of transparency, and ministers should direct public funds to the media for advertising according to fair and objective criteria. 

According to the guidelines, state adverts and promotional material produced by the government and public entities should not include partisan content. 

Pictures of ministers, or even their names, in government adverts would see them fall foul of the new guidelines. 

KullĦadd’s advert-rich supplement featured both images and names of some of the ministers.

The advertising guidelines were drafted by the commissioner after he found that a €7,000 advertising campaign, prominently featuring OPM Minister Carmelo Abela, did not contain any “information of value” to the public and was intended to boost his image.

The OPM was also asked for the amount of public funds poured into this one PL supplement.