Journalists from most, if not all, of Malta’s media houses gathered in an unprecedented show of unity on Thursday to honour fallen media colleague Daphne Caruana Galizia, who was assassinated by a car bomb close to her home in Bidnija on Monday.

Reporters, editors, camerapersons, photographers, sports journalists, TV presenters and many others conveyed the message that this attack will not stop the media from shining a light where others want darkness.

The macabre killing of Daphne will not muzzle us. It will not stop us from fulfilling our role as a watchdog to the institutions. We will stand up to intimidation and we will not be afraid.

In the same vein, we will continue to fight for the removal of criminal libel from our law – a process that unfortunately remained unfinished in the short-lived previous legislature.

Of equal importance last Thursday, the media, represented by the Institute of Maltese Journalists, filed a court application for the investigators to protect Caruana Galizia’s sources.

The protection of Daphne’s sources is of paramount importance since we know that the investigators have retrieved her laptop and possibly also her mobile phone from the wreckage of the car. The data in those electronic devices must be protected, even after her murder.

Daphne was always careful in handling her sources, insisting on using encrypted programmes to communicate with them. But we cannot know for sure if her laptop, which was found in a mangled state but from which data could possibly be extracted nonetheless, has compromising information on her wide network of moles and informants.

The protection of sources is sacrosanct for us journalists. It is the cornerstone of our profession. The identity of people passing on information to Daphne, and to other journalists, must always remain secret.

The courts have to take all necessary steps to make sure that any data that is possibly contained on Daphne’s laptop and also on other devices she might have used at home to be protected.