Over the past few years I have been reading your newspaper with pleasure and enjoyment and it is rewarding to see an objective stance taken when you publish some letters that are critical of your position.

However, it has recently become apparent that your choice in supporting Mrs Caruana Galizia is sullying your reputation as a leading newspaper on the island. By giving space to what can only be described as vindictive vitriol you are risking your readership and standing in the community.

With escalating attacks on certain individuals that border on slander and her often shameless insults to innocent people, who by nature of their employment cannot respond, this seems not only cowardly but dishonourable.

She writes prodigiously on her blog, which she links to your newspaper, where she insults freely and without any form of redress. Most readers of this blog identify her writings with your newspaper and I wonder how the directors of Standard Publications feel about this danger. What responsibility do they shoulder for this form of journalism?

I am often amazed at her basic, poor language skills, replete with sexual innuendo and childish slurs. She often makes assumptions regarding others and writes about them as though she has primary evidence of their proof. She presents opinion as facts and interprets these to suit her biased stance.

As I have said, many readers have written, and you have chosen to publish many of their letters that complain about the tone and attitude. But how long can you keep doing this? How long can the paper and its directors be associated with a journalist (and I use the word guardedly) who is ever so surely dragging the papers’ reputation and those who work within the organisation, to the lowest position possible?

Her latest attack on a magistrate and others must surely give you concern to rethink her position within your organisation.

With degrees in anthropology and being registered for an MA in Diplomatic Studies, one would think that Mrs Caruana Galizia would, well, understand the papers’ readers and that she would be, well, more diplomatic about her opinions.

Peter P. Dingli

Templestowe

AUSTRALIA