Perhaps I am stepping in an area where angels fear to tread. But the current reputation and confidence crisis this country is facing, the reality of Malta’s failing institutions, the web of corruption as well as the iniquities permeating the higher echelons of government prevent me from being an idle bystander.
I am referring to the order issued by the Court of Magistrates prohibiting the publication by Times of Malta of chats registered between Yorgen Fenech and people in high places.
The court has even triggered off proceedings against Times of Malta for contempt of court and possible criminal prosecution. All this because this news organisation abided by its sacred duty to let the people know. Knowledge, it seems, is a dangerous thing.
This brings to mind the Pentagon Papers case which arose in the early 1970s in the United States. Anyone who has watched the informative and excellent film The Post knows what the case was all about.
At that time a US court had ordered all media not to report the contents of confidential documents which had been leaked to the Washington Post and New York Times revealing years of lies and deceit by different administrations on the Vietnam War as contained in a report compiled by Daniel Ellsberg and commissioned by then defence secretary Robert McNamara.
The newspapers received an order to cease further publication from a US District Court judge, at the request of the administration. The government claimed publication would cause “irreparable injury to the defence interests of the United States”.
Was it not in the public interest to know that political appointees in public authorities were in cahoots with private entrepreneurs?
Similarly, in The Sunday Times case in 1979 regarding an order issued by the House of Lords prohibiting The Sunday Times of London from commenting on the case of children born deformed by the use of the Thalidomide drug, the European Court, in Strasbourg, quashing this order, ruled that: while the courts are the forum for the settlement of disputes, this does not mean that there can be no prior discussion of disputes elsewhere, be it in specialised journals, in the general press or among the public at large.
Besides, it was incumbent on the press to impart information and ideas concerning matters that come before the courts just as in other areas of public interest.
Not only do the media have the task of imparting such information and ideas: the public also has a right to receive them.
In the current local case it was Fenech’s defence team that requested and obtained a prohibition of leaked chats between their client and people in high places. But the public has a right to know the links, relationships between a person accused of complicity in a murder and people of authority within regulatory bodies.
This is in the public interest. Was it not in the public interest to know that political appointees in public authorities were in cahoots with private entrepreneurs?
In the Pentagon Papers case, the US Supreme Court overturned and annulled the gagging order of the lower court and decided that, even though the Pentagon Papers had been leaked illegally, the right of the public to know was paramount.
Hugo Black, one of the Supreme Court justices who rejected the injunction, eloquently stated: “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government.”
The effects of the order by the Maltese court are clear: stop the press from reporting, which means the government heaves a great sigh of relief. In the same way that the government did everything it could to halt the Daphne Caruana
Galizia inquiry, which has revealed more than anyone expected of the intricate evil network of influences and favours between the powers-that-be and shady characters, so are the effects of this court order, whether intended or not.
It effectively favours those who want us to know less, not more.
Tonio Borg is a former European Commissioner and deputy prime minister.