Malta’s media freedom: Laws on paper, shackles in practice

Legal Notice 175 of 2025, bearing the grandiose title European Media Freedom Act (Measures for Implementation) Order has just been published. It sounds impressive, doesn’t it?

What the man on the Clapham Omnibus is supposed to understand is that Malta is doing its bit to bring the European Media Freedom Act – one of the EU’s democracy safeguards – into our domestic system.

Journalists and editors should be celebrating. But is LN 175 much more than a pretty ribbon tied around an empty box, with or without a Jack waiting to jump out at you? 

The European Media Freedom Act (EMFA) came into force across the European Union on 8 August. It was not born in a vacuum. It emerged from years of growing alarm across the continent, brought into sharp focus by Daphne Caruana Galizia’s assassination. 

What with some governments spying on journalists, other governments turning state broadcasters into propaganda machines, oligarchs buying up newsrooms, and lawfare being used to drain media houses of time, money and willpower, the landscape was pretty bleak from some viewpoints.

The EMFA set out to address three urgent priorities:

1. Protection of sources – ending the practice of forcing journalists to reveal where their information comes from, and clamping down on surveillance, spyware and state snooping.
2. Independence of public service media – ensuring taxpayer-funded broadcasters actually serve the public, rather than the ruling party.
3. Curbing SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) – abusive litigation intended to gag journalists by dragging them through court until they collapse under the weight of costs and delays.

What’s our own landscape like?

Defamation was decriminalised in 2018, though this hasn’t stopped assorted politicians raising their heads above the parapet every so often to demand that scurrilous journalists be banged up and/or hit with higher damages.  And that’s not to mention attempts to make journalists and others having their collars felt by the police every time someone feels mildly insulted enough to screech “hate speech”.

An anti-SLAPP law was rushed through in 2024, with Malta trying to claim the distinction of being the first EU state to implement the directive.  This is not the time or the place to debate the extent to which that piece of legislation was worth more than the bandwidth it consumed. Suffice it to say that it does absolutely nothing to deter people from reaching for their phone to instruct their briefs to file domestic libel suits, as it only addresses cross-border SLAPPs.

And we all know about PBS, the less said about that, the better, at least for those who don’t admit that sometimes it could be better known as Super Two.

So, it remains necessary to improve the media landscape, and then some and, one might think, with LN 175, we have formally nodded along to the EMFA. 

A striking innovation is the creation of the Office for Advertising and the Media – a watchdog with actual teeth. Headed by someone appointed for a one-off seven-year term, the Office can compel media operators to hand over ownership details, contracts, financial records and any other documents needed to ensure compliance with the EMFA.  

Its remit goes further: it can investigate on site, inspect records, and levy fines of up to €2,500 for non-cooperation, with criminal penalties running as high as €10,000 for persistent offenders. For a media landscape long used to opacity in ownership and the quiet channelling of public advertising spend, this marks a shift.

Public bodies must now report every six months on their advertising contracts, while the Office publishes an annual transparency report for all to see. In effect, the law arms us with a dedicated authority capable of prising open the murky relationship between media, politics and public money – if, that is, the new Office is allowed to use its powers without fear or favour.

But Malta’s problem is not with passing laws and creating “institutions” (you know, the ones they want to leave in peace to work, as long as they were working for them).  It is with enforcing the laws and giving the institutions the power to force respect for their decisions. Ask the Ombudsman what he thinks about that.

The gap between the parchment on which the laws are inscribed and the practice of giving them effect could swallow a newsroom whole – newsrooms aren’t exactly gargantuan nowadays.

Take source protection. The EMFA insists that journalists cannot be coerced into revealing sources and that spyware should only be used against them in the gravest criminal cases, under tight judicial control.

In theory, this should embolden whistleblowers. In Malta, it will do little to erase the well-earned suspicion that journalists are still treated as hostile targets rather than as watchdogs serving the public interest. When ministries consistently and continually fight tooth and nail to withhold basic information under Freedom of Information laws, one doubts that a shiny new legal notice will suddenly transform Castille and its Dominions into paragons of transparency.

Take defamation. It is true that Malta struck defamation off the criminal code in 2018. But civil suits remain potent weapons of intimidation. Even more grotesquely, we have kept alive the uniquely Maltese provision that allows heirs to inherit defamation actions. This is why Daphne Caruana Galizia’s family had to fend off lawsuits years after her assassination.

Take SLAPPs. The EU Anti-SLAPP Directive – aptly dubbed Daphne’s Law – was supposed to give journalists the tools to fend off abusive litigation. Early dismissal of vexatious suits, penalties for plaintiffs who abuse the courts, shifting legal costs onto those who weaponise them.

Malta’s version was a pale imitation. It ticked the Brussels box, but offered little real protection. As the Daphne Foundation, Reporters Without Borders, and the European Parliament have all pointed out, our transposition is inadequate. It was more an exercise in political theatre than in democratic reform.

And in the meantime, the defamed (from their own point of view) and their lickspittle supporters clamour for increased damages.

The consequences are not theoretical. When The Shift is hauled into court by defendants demanding access to their internal journalistic research, where would the EMFA’s protection figure, at least insofar as saving them the trouble of even responding is concerned? The Courts respect confidentiality, but that doesn’t mean that the hassle hasn’t been suffered.

When legacy defamation suits against Caruana Galizia’s heirs are allowed to fester, where is the EU’s promise of dignity and safety for investigative reporters?

When PBS acts as a megaphone for the government of the day, where is the independence that Europe’s law was supposed to guarantee?

LN 175 does not answer these questions. It merely restates the bleedin’ obvious, that Malta is bound by the EMFA, as if a law passed in Brussels magically transforms our political culture.

It does not. Culture changes when institutions enforce laws impartially, when courts throw out abusive claims, when governments accept scrutiny as part of democratic life. 

Culture changes when political leaders, who are also national leaders, stop partisan apologists and opportunistic brown-nosers masquerading as “commentators” from threatening, vilifying, lying about and generally intimidating anyone who dares to say that the government and all its works are not, actually, the best thing since sliced bread.

We might be good at transposing directives, but we are very bad at applying their spirit.

The EMFA was supposed to tilt the balance back in favour of the public’s right to know. In Malta, it risks becoming just another decorative legal notice: a triumph of form over substance, compliance over conviction.

Until a journalist can write without fear of litigation, until a newsroom can work without having to waste time protecting its sources, and until PBS is run for citizens rather than the Cabinet, Malta will not have media freedom worthy of the name.

LN 175 may satisfy Brussels. But for those who care about journalism, it is a reminder that in Malta, the shackles of intimidation remain firmly in place – polished perhaps, but still locked.