The newspaper Kullhadd must make reference to the names of the MPs who asked questions which the journal previously reported on in a recent issue, Speaker Anglu Farrugia decided in a ruling on media reporting on Tuesday.
Speaker Farrugia said that during the parliament session which took place on Monday, Nationalist Party MP Paula Mifsud Bonnici requested for action to be taken regarding an issue of Kullhadd published on 29 June, where three articles regarding responses given to parliamentary questions posed by members of the Opposition did not state the source of the questions.
The relevant questions were posed by MPs Graziella Galea, Graziella Attard Previ, and Chris Said.
Speaker Farrugia said that in each of the articles, despite the fact that it was stated that the information was obtained from answers given to parliamentary questions, no reference had been made to the individuals who posed the questions.
He continued by referring to several previous rulings regarding the reporting of parliamentary work, particularly the ruling given in sitting 204 of 6 February 2024, in which it was stated that whenever a reference is made in media reporting on a parliamentary question or a speech made by an MP, then the reporting must also include the name of the MP who either submitted the parliamentary question, who answered it, or who delivered the speech.
He said that in that ruling, reference was made to the ruling given during sitting 194 of 3 November 2014, regarding reports of parliamentary proceedings in the media, where the Speaker had made it clear that when there is no reference to the MP who asked the parliamentary question, then that reporting cannot be considered as complete reporting unless the names were omitted for particular reasons, namely because doing so would have been considered to fall under Article 4 of the Code of Journalistic Ethics issued by the Malta Press Club. Speaker Farrugia stated that Article 4 of the Code of Journalistic Ethics entails that a violation of the article would mean that the confidentiality of a source of information was not respected, a source of information was divulged without explicit permission to do so, information supplied was published without verifying its veracity and accuracy as far as possible, or no prompt and prominent correction were made after establishing that a significant inaccuracy, misleading statement, or distorted report had been published.
With that said, the Speaker stated that the articles mentioned by Mifsud Bonnici which appeared in the issue of Kullhadd refer to three parliamentary questions which were asked in a transparent and open manner and therefore cannot be considered to fall under the provisions of Article 4 of the Code of Journalistic Ethics.