News | Sunday, 05 July 2009

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The ire of the PN’s diehards: MaltaToday stands by its story

Matthew Vella
After last week’s revealing portrait of some of Lawrence Gonzi’s most loyal party activists by Karl Stagno-Navarra, the attempts at denting MaltaToday’s credibility have been given short shrift.
MaltaToday’s three-page feature gave vent to the party’s diehards’ concerns about the state of the PN, and the people who are running both the party and the government’s inner circle. Some comments, such as those which squarely laid the blame for the Gonzi’s government’s unpopularity at the feet of secretary-general Paul Borg Olivier, minister Austin Gatt or Richard Cachia Caruana, the permanent representative to the EU, were off the record because no activist wanted to be identified with the criticism – the kind that could earn them some sort of private rebuke.
Apart from a letter from Samuel Azzopardi (see letters) of Victoria, no activist has attempted to deny anything that Karl Stagno-Navarra wrote last Sunday. Indeed, MaltaToday verified the contents of its article with the activists, and confirmed that all their comments had been represented faithfully.
This exercise of double-checking not only reconfirmed what was represented correctly, but also revealed an attempt by a party official to convince certain activists to publicly deny the contents of the article. This attempt failed, and confirmed the baseless accusations being levelled against MaltaToday.
Any newspaper’s greatest asset is its credibility, and MaltaToday will not take any attempt to discredit it sitting down.
Additionally, we want to remind readers that our choice of activists interviewed for this new feature did not seek to garner any negative reaction from one particular faction. To put it bluntly, not one John Dalli loyalist was interviewed. Instead, we picked party members who traditionally belong to the Gonzi camp.
There is much to be said about the PN’s own attitude towards self-criticism. But that’s something the party is going to have to address. To MaltaToday, it’s the honesty and authenticity of its news reports that matters.

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