The relationship between the English language papers in Malta and the MLP has always been, at best, a dodgy affair.
The majority of readers of these papers come from the socio-economic groups having a majority of traditional PN voters and therefore it is natural that the MLP enjoys the support of only a minority of these readers.
These papers know how their readers think and what their readers want and they obviously cater for their readers. The MLP, on one hand, continually criticises these papers depicting them as anti-Labour – a sweeping generalisation, if there ever was one – while on the other hand pushing for more pro-Labour columnists and letters writers in order to “balance” what they view as a “democratic deficit” in the local press.
This two-pronged strategy implies a tight-rope walking exercise. The MLP cannot afford to overdo its criticism of this press with the type of virulent verbal attacks that in 1979 motivated the labour mob to set fire The Times building. The pressure has to be constant in order to condition the editorial staff of these papers; but it cannot be overdone to the extent that it provokes a contrary reaction.
Again, the pro-Labour contributions in these papers have to be reasonable and sensible if readers are to be coaxed into agreeing with Labour party stances. Overdoing it, by writing the sort of hysterical rubbish that one reads in the GWU papers, or – even worse – in the MLP’s own Sunday paper KullĦadd, could undermine these efforts. Pro-Labour columnists, who include Alfred Sant himself, are not that stupid and they know how to play the game. The same cannot be said for many pro-Labour letter writers.
Moreover, many recent letters, praising Alfred Sant and denigrating the Prime Minister and the Nationalist Party, signed by correspondents who seem to have suddenly joined the spate of politically inspired writers who regularly send letters for publication to The Times and to The Malta Independent, give rise to the suspicion that the MLP has embarked on an orchestrated campaign aimed at publishing letters in the English language newspapers in order to push the party line.
On the Thursday after Alfred Sant took part in Bondiplus with the Prime Minister, three such letters suddenly appeared in The Times. The “coincidence” evident in the three letters written in the same style and containing the same arguments (purportedly written by three different correspondents), being written and submitted to the paper after the Bondiplus programme was broadcast on Monday evening… with all three making it to the same edition of The Times on Thursday morning, stretches the credulity of many an observer!
Whether all the people signing these letters actually exist – which seems to be in doubt – is irrelevant. It is obvious that these letters are being written by fewer authors than are signing them. Incredibly, the MLP propaganda machinery seems to think that the average reader of these papers is an imbecile who can be persuaded to switch political allegiance after reading the same silly – and sometimes preposterous –arguments over and over again in letters signed by different people!
Two recent incidents involving the editor of this newspaper (MaltaToday) and of The Malta Independent on Sunday reveal that the powers that be at the Labour headquarters have also overplayed the pressure they normally apply to these newspapers, to the extent that this pressure has taken a nasty turn.
In the case of MaltaToday, on one particular Saturday, the editor, Saviour Balzan, received a telephone call from an unnamed Labour Party official who claimed that he knew that the next day the paper was carrying a poll that showed that the PN was two points ahead of the MLP. The editor was threatened with the MLP going public with allegations about one of the directors of the publishing house of the paper, which allegations were completely untrue. Blackmail is always a nasty thing, but attempting to blackmail somebody by threatening to spread lies about him is the most despicable idea that can occur to anyone.
The obvious question that crops up is how the MLP apparatchik came to know what the paper was going to publish the next day: even though the details were not correct, it was true that the paper was going to publish the results of a poll that showed the PN to be slightly ahead of the MLP, albeit by a very small fraction of the two points mentioned in the threatening telephone call.
The same question crops up in the case involving the editor of The Malta Independent on Sunday, Noel Grima. Again a telephone call late on a Saturday evening in which the caller – in this case identified as Joe Mifsud, the MLP International Secretary – knowing what the paper was going to carry the next day. An angry Mifsud, in fact, asked Noel Grima why he had let Daphne Caruana Galizia write about Alfred Sant’s hairpiece!
This is what Noel Grima himself wrote about the incident: “I was flabbergasted. The newspaper had not even left our offices by then, as the sports pages still needed to be closed. ‘How do you know?’, I asked him. ‘Because someone told us’, he replied.”
After revealing the incident in his paper last Sunday, Noel Grima – linking his experience with that of Saviour Balzan – made some pertinent questions: “Does Labour indeed have a spy in every newsroom? Or is there more to this than meets the eye? And if Labour exerts so much pressure on two newsrooms prior to publication while still in Opposition, what will it do when in power?”
These two incidents reveal the incredibly uncouth and crude manner in which the Labour Party tries to control any damage that could emanate from the English language press: an attitude which demonstrates that they do not think it twice for this control to be exerted at the expense of their “beliefs” in the freedom of the press.
Well, there it is. Now these editors know where they stand: Big Brother is only a telephone call away. Or is it just an election away?

micfal@maltanet.net