I have recently been abroad on holiday in France. While I was away, Joseph A. Muscat of Ta’ Xbiex wrote a letter in another newspaper in which he accused me, under the heading “Judgement on the Church”, of ‘castigating’ (sic) the Maltese Church in an article I had written about its role in the recent referendum on divorce.

My article had dealt specifically with the Archbishop’s explanation of how the Church had spent €180,000 on the divorce campaign and how he had wished it had been more. But castigating the Church could not have been further from my intention, or the truth. I was deeply critical – and still am – of the Maltese Church’s conduct in the divorce campaign. But it is criticism motivated by disappointment that a once-great human institution with a capacity to do good has brought itself low by its own folly and misjudgement.

As distance from the referendum campaign increases it becomes ever more clear that the Church’s involvement and conduct was ill-judged, ill-advised and ill-led. By any objective measure, its investment of almost €200,000 in an essentially lay campaign was utterly unwarranted.

How can Professor Muscat, or any other apologist, possibly justify such expenditure by the Church when it now refuses any form of financial compensation to the victims of clerical abuse and rape – crimes for which it has to shoulder ultimate responsibility? How can the Maltese Church apologise – as it rightly did, though only when it saw the writing on the wall – to those it may have offended during the divorce campaign, and now say that it is sorry to the victims of rape, when the overwhelming feeling is that it should be deeply ashamed of what it has done, and should pay heavy compensation accordingly?

Perhaps, Professor Muscat, who of course has every right to his opinion on this matter, might apply his mind − informed naturally by his accumulated years of knowledge as a surgeon and doctor of medicine and therefore far more qualified than I to assess such issues – to providing satisfactory answers to these two questions.

I have begun this article with this example of an exchange of views on a sensitive subject because it illustrates well the vital benefits in a vibrant democracy of a free press. There is a healthy difference of view between Professor Muscat and myself, which we have both been able to express, on which our readers can make their own judgement.

The great political philosopher Edmund Burke had famously said: “There were Three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporter’s Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than them all.” Since the long fight for the freedom of the press in the 18th century, the importance of newspapers as the Fourth Estate, informing and reflecting public opinion, has become unquestioned. The need for independent journalists, free comment and access to information, are today agreed by all politicians and administrators.

In Malta – as with so many of our civil rights, divorce being but the latest in the battle – we came late to freedom of the press. This was won over a century ago in the face of stiff opposition from the Maltese Church, reluctant as always to cede what it saw as a potential threat to its power. We have enjoyed freedom of expression and of the press ever since. It is embedded in Article 41 of our Constitution as a fundamental right, although as Michael Falzon recently pointed out: “In Malta, we have a nominally free press, but also a libel law and relevant case-law loaded against this freedom.”

The situation is compounded here by some newspapers that exercise their versions of free speech under blatantly politically partisan banners. No harm with this, and everybody in Malta knows the score − except presumably those who are wedded to those newspapers and accept their political party’s propaganda unquestioningly. For some semblance of objectivity, in both news reporting and analysis, one has to go to the independent, mainly English language newspapers of The Times, The Malta Independent and MaltaToday, and their Sunday stable-mates.

Malta enjoys a relatively vibrant press. In recent years, as the electorate has become more educated, more discerning and less deferential, and with the arrival of thrusting, new independent newspapers, the standard of analysis and commentary has improved. There is, however, more that can be done.

Our capacity for investigative journalism of the kind we have seen so successfully conducted by, for example, The Daily Telegraph in the United Kingdom with its exposure of the expenses scandal by Members of Parliament, has on the whole been lacking here. I clearly do not include – or condone in any way – the conduct of the News of the World. The role of investigative journalism is to hold politicians and officialdom to account and, although efforts were made both with the secretive ministerial pay increase and the contract for the new power station, they seemed at the time to peter out inconclusively – the former came to haunt the government only later.

The absolute test of good investigative journalism must be that the story should be in the public interest, exposing a serious misdemeanour and preventing the public from being misled by some statement or action of an individual, ministry or organisation. A matter is in the public interest because the public has the right to know, in the service of fairness and openness as part of a democracy, if it is being deceived. The country needs this robust form of reporting if we want to preserve an open society.

It may sometimes be troublesome to expose matters we would prefer to think did not exist, but the alternative of a cosy Establishment that only looks after its own interests is worse. This is why those who complained about the graphic accounts of clerical abuse, which were published recently, were wrong to do so, and why the Attorney General’s refusal to answer questions why one priest was (erroneously) cleared of rape is misguided.

The press in Malta must continue to strive objectively to assess the successes, failures and follies of our political masters – and, yes, other powerful institutions including the presidency, the judiciary and the Maltese Church – in a fashion which may sometimes provoke dismay. No independent newspaper editor should be willing unswervingly or unquestionably to toe a party line.

The problem with our journalism often is not that too many awkward questions are asked, but too few. Too often the heavy hand of the law, in the shape of our libel laws, or too cosy a relationship with politicians, ensures that journalists are stopped from getting at the truth.

Speaking Truth to Power lies at the very heart of a truly free press. The press and those placed in power over us, especially politicians, will always have a close relationship of both mutual interest and hostility. They are locked in an unlikely, sometimes grisly, embrace. This is not perfect but, like democracy, nobody has come up with a better system. The one non-negotiable factor, however, must be that we shall always need an aggressive and free press.