Let’s get things straight: can a newspaper remain really independent and a champion of the environment when one of its shareholders happens to be a well-known building tycoon? Very probably not.

There are upright newspaper columnists and dirty columnists. There are those who research their stories properly and just will not stoop so low as to attack entities, unions and individual people – at least not until they have definite proof of wrongdoing.

Then there are columnists who work according to the agenda that may be insisted upon from them or that is simply the result of their own warped way of looking at things. They will do anything to reach their sly aims, omitting, in so doing, to research their story properly and instead trying hard to make it seem as if their dirty hunches are the absolute truth. They may go so far as to actually knowingly reproduce inaccurate ‘facts’ about people.

I believe that Stephen Calleja’s recent spate of obnoxious spin-mongering puts him firmly in this latter category.

He hates and attacks the Malta Union of Teachers remorselessly; he abhors all the environmentally conscious – and hard-working – NGOs, but his most poisonous darts have to date been reserved for the Ramblers Association and FAA – Flimkien ghal Ambjent Ahjar (Together Towards a Better Environment).

Possibly obeying instructions, or the dictates of his uncontrollable mind, Calleja is certainly not averse to throwing the dirtiest mud at those who are most vocal. His attack on Mr Lino Bugeja, the worthy leader of the Ramblers, some weeks ago, was not just spiteful but quite irresponsible – this because, as usual, Calleja’s lopsided theories of perceived wrongdoing by Mr Bugeja were bereft of any actual proof of such wrongdoing.

Stephen Calleja’s equally virulent attack on Ms Astrid Vella of FAA (TMIS, 21 February) is the latest in a string of irresponsible articles penned by this worthy columnist.

Entitled Mepa reform draft bill: FAA head’s private shareholding could mean exclusion from Mepa board, this article mixes unimportant facts with insipid innuendo that seeks to tarnish Ms Vella’s well known – and much admired – good reputation. Calleja tries to make it look as if Ms Vella was on one hand leading the crusade against the speculative waste of Malta’s fast dwindling natural environment but on the other, engaging in speculative building development. Can anything be cheekier, more virulent than that – especially considering that it is all just hogwash?

Is it just a coincidence that this attack was launched just one week after Ms Vella/FAA and the Ramblers Association prevented Albert Mizzi/Cenmed from building a score of boathouses on the Mellieha foreshore?

I do not doubt that Ms Vella is quite able to defend herself from this scurrilous bit of news reporting. Calleja should congratulate himself, as he has done it yet again – he has made his hateful and warped imagination look like the absolute truth – as is regularly happening in the disgusting nonsense which he pens.

Joseph Grech

ST PAUL’S BAY

Editorial note: Both articles in question are backed by proof in the possession of this newspaper. In the one case, this newspaper obtained a copy of the contract signed by Lino Bugeja when he bought a parcel of land in Marsascala, in which it is stipulated that the user could go on tilling the land “until the building permits are issued”.

With regard to the second article mentioned, the Memorandum of Association of B.M.C. Developments Ltd, of which Ms Vella is a shareholder, as it was presented to the Registrar of Companies in February 1998, lists the company’s objectives, which include “to develop immovable property and construct buildings”. This is not hogwash or inaccurate facts, it is research resulting in hard facts.