The ominous silence – Manuel Delia
Journalists from across the local media landscape, together with activists, academics and intellectuals, wrote to the prime minister earlier this week urging him to open to the public any discussion he might be having on how freedom of expression in this country is to be better safeguarded. Five years ago, a journalist was killed in a car bomb. At first, in the service of their own survival, the political authorities in this country tried to dismiss the event as an uncharacteristic freak or even as something the journalist brought upon herself through anything but her journalism. Political operatives indulged innuendo, suggesting that Daphne Caruana Galizia was the victim of matricide. At length, an independent inquiry documented the causes of her death beyond the decision taken by a few individuals to pull a trigger on her and found just how unsafe it is to be a journalist in this country. Much before the inquiry conclusions were published in July 2021, an Italian journalist published a book about Daphne’s killing in September 2018 with the title ‘L’isola assassina’. The title wasn’t hyperbolic. This country – its politics, its culture, its laws, its justice system, its law...