News | Sunday, 26 April 2009

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MEP candidate pulls out of interview

Labour candidate for MEP Joseph Cuschieri pulled out of an interview after refusing to face a MaltaToday journalist with direct questions. The former MP left the journalist waiting outside his office door for 30 minutes, before informing him he was pulling out of the interview.
He first demanded MaltaToday send him questions in writing. When the newspaper obliged with the subjects it would be broaching, the former MP decided to send back his own tailor-made answers. “I am extremely busy, and did a sacrifice to prepare the answers for your paper on such short notice. Now you tell me you don’t wish to publish it?” Cuschieri said, when told that all interviews are done face-to-face as is MaltaToday’s policy.
“If you wish to interview me, you have to abide by my conditions. These are my conditions: you give me your questions in writing, I reply in writing,” he said.
The aspirant MEP went as far as to ask whether it was “because Labour is coming through as a credible political force?” that MaltaToday was not publishing his answers, and said he would publish them elsewhere under the heading ‘The interview MaltaToday did not want to publish’.
The ominous prospect notwithstanding, will anyone with some credible force from Labour come through to Mr Cuschieri to teach him how to deal with the press?

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