The bullying of journalists takes place on a regular basis by those who are adverse to the bad publicity that comes along when one’s dirty deeds are exposed to the general public. Such matters are not often reported but any journalist worth his or her salt is very well familiar with the intimidation tactics employed by those who are adverse to such exposure. 

We are threatened with our jobs, with lawsuits and our publishing houses are also threatened with the withholding of advertising by big business. But by and large our skin is thick and we know that such threats come as part of the territory.

But never has the bullying of journalists been quite as blatant as it was with yesterday’s confirmation that one big business, the db Group, has filed no less than 19 simultaneous lawsuits against one of this newspaper’s columnists, Daphne Caruana Galizia.

There is no need to go into the merits of the articles in question. The basic fact is that the filing of 19 contemporaneous lawsuits is not only a case of overkill on a massive scale. It is a case of bullying tactics against the press to the highest degree when one, two or maybe three lawsuits at the most would surely have sufficed if the db Group was purely interested in safeguarding its reputation and defending its honour.

Such tactics are unacceptable on any level and while everyone in this country is of course accorded the right to defend their integrity before the courts by filing libel cases, the lengths the db Group has resorted to are on another level altogether.

To file 19 libel cases in one fell swoop about a series of articles treating the same subject matter, is a clear-cut case of intimidation if there ever was one. According to the journalist, she will have to pay something in the region of €8,000 in court fees just to file responses to those 19 law suits, a virtual drop in the bucket for a big business bully but a huge fee for your average mortal journalist should such behaviour create a rather nasty precedent. But it is all too easy for big business to institute libel proceedings, or even 19 of them, even if they know they are bound to lose them. 

As Mrs Caruana Galizia put it yesterday, the levelling of 19 lawsuits is nothing short of an extreme form, and this newspaper could not agree more.

It also comes at a time when the government is seeking to revamp the laws governing the media. And this at a time when pre-emptive garnishee orders were also ordered against the same journalist, who saw her bank accounts frozen as a result and who was only bailed out thanks to a massive turnout from a crowd-funding campaign initiated in sympathy and solidarity on her behalf.

It is ironic that just as the government is on the cusp of doing away with criminal libel, a vestige that belongs to the times of those who lived behind the Iron Curtain, that a politician in one instance and big business in another have found new and creative ways to bully, intimidate and attempt to silence the press.

But the press will not be silenced and those who attempt to do so will find themselves holding the short end of the stick if not now, then at some point further down the road. 

Any journalist who concocts a story out of thin air should undoubtedly face the full brunt of the law, there is no question about that. But for big business to throw its weight around in such a manner is wholly unacceptable and anyone in the press, irrespective of the political stripe of their respective newsrooms, should recoil not only in horror, but in disgust at the actions the db Group has resorted to.

That applies to any journalist and even to those who have an inherent dislike for Mrs Caruana Galizia’s pen, style and political leanings. That is because such actions imperil the work of every hardworking and law-abiding journalist in the country.

The kind of intimidation applied by the db Group can have long-ranging repercussions on the media. And it is for that reason that we stand by Mrs Caruana Galizia – not necessarily as far as the content of the disputed articles go, but in terms of the intimidation and bullying tactics to which she has been subjected. Such behaviour is utterly condemnable on all accounts and it absolutely must not be tolerated.