This newspaper never has nor will it ever be in the habit of taking cheap shots at the competition. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said of our colleagues at l-orizzont, who have lately stooped to all new lows.

In its latest rants against this publishing house, the newspaper has well and truly pushed the limits of absurdity even further than it has in the past. And while we would normally prefer to not dignify such articles and editorials with a response, an attack as baseless as it is virulent needs to be answered.

The newspaper has chosen to target this publishing house, and one of our journalists in particular, by pitifully attempting to link us to the purported evil cabal that was the Tonio Fenech Financial Shadow Google ‘spy’ group.

Why? For the simple reason that two people from within the group suggested that this publishing house should be contacted about a story dealing with a company that was laying off employees – absolutely nothing more and nothing less than that.

If this newspaper was really part of this evil group, one would imagine that we would have been after better news than that. After all, a story about a company laying off workers is not exactly the stuff of Pulitzer prizes. It is even more shocking that a newspaper owned by none other than the General Workers’ Union accuses us of sowing unrest in the country with a story about job losses. 

So a union-owned newspaper accuses this publishing house and another of forming part of this supposedly evil cabal whose intention, according to the newspaper’s editorial the day after the original story, is to cause untold damage to the country and its people. According to the newspaper, this publishing house and The Times are Nationalist Party propaganda vehicles, and that the incriminating emails published by the newspaper are testimony to that.

Moreover, we have apparently been ‘infiltrated’ by journalists who are merely following their political overlords’ instructions and who are bent on spinning stories so as to create national uncertainty. 

We take extreme exception to such comments and there are several grounds for this publishing house to take legal action against the newspaper, on both the commercial and personal level. 

This is, however, not an avenue we are ever likely to pursue. That is because although the country’s media operates in a fiercely competitive atmosphere, we are all journalists, although some may not deserve the title, and there is a certain professional courtesy that this newspaper is not yet willing to disregard.

But in the light of such serious accusations, we must stress that as a fully independent newspaper – not only in name but, more importantly, in ethos, we will always call a spade a spade, and we will continue to do so without fear or favour from either side of the country’s bitter political divide.

Moreover, the actual Malta Independent journalist mentioned in the story is described as a discredit to all journalists in the country. This editorialist has worked with dozens of journalists over the years and he can safely say that the integrity of this journalist in particular is bar none. And that is what makes this completely unfounded broadside attack all the more vile.

In so doing, the newspaper has plunged the deepest of depths and has shown itself to be a discredit to the time-honoured craft of journalism and publishing. 

There was another instance in which the newspaper linked us to the ‘spy group’ because of a story about a rival bidder for the petroleum division privatisation, and the fact that the losing company could have taken legal action against the government.

Let us make it perfectly clear: leaks to the media are everyday business. This newspaper, as well as others, receives leaks from the government, the Opposition and the general public on a daily basis. To link this newspaper to the ‘spy group’ simply because one of its members passed us information is absolutely absurd. By the same yardstick, does the newspaper link us to the government every time a story comes our way from those quarters?

But instead of debating how newspapers are leaked stories, something our colleagues atl-orizzont are very familiar with, or the merits of what was, in actual fact, a comparatively very small and inconsequential story, it would perhaps be more pertinent to question how, exactly, the newspaper got hold of the Google group messages. 

One possibility is that there was a mole in the group, which is highly unlikely. Another is that a member of that group was absentminded enough to have left their computer on and themselves logged in to the group, and by happenstance someone came across the open webpage and printed out conversations from the group. Again, not highly probable but still possible.

Another plausible explanation would be that either those members who were government employees were under internal surveillance, and somehow those undertaking the surveillance leaked the conversations to a rabidly anti-Nationalist newspaper. Another is that the group or its members was under some sort of external surveillance, or it was hacked by persons in authority or by persons unknown.

Perhaps there is, after all, more to this story than l-orizzont is willing to expose. Living in a proverbial glass house, it should be careful about the stones it throws, and where it throws them.