‘Word about town’ was reliable source enough, Caruana Galizia tells court

Malta Independent columnist and blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia has claimed in court that she had a “reliable source” when she wrote in her blog that Mediatoday was planning to sell one of its newspapers to Union Print.

In a hearing on the libel case brought against her by Mediatoday, publishers of MaltaToday, lawyer Toni Abela brought to Caruana Galizia’s attention the fact that she specifically claimed that “word about town” was that a newspaper published by Mediatoday was on sale.

While the blogger claimed she had a reliable source, Abela questioned whether “word about town” implied that such hearsay was based on a reliable source.

Caruana Galizia claimed that the style of writing in a blog was “different from that carried in a newspaper article… I think that I am the reliable source, in the sense that I am the source of information to my readers and therefore what I am saying is a reliable source.”

She said that she had tried to contact Mediatoday’s director Roger Degiorgio, whom she claimed did not reply to her calls. On the other hand, Caruana Galizia admitted to being “flustered” at the way managing editor Saviour Balzan had already dealt with her in another, unrelated phonecall, after the latter gave her an earful which she replicated on her blog.

Lawyer Toni Abela however contested the claim from being inserted in the testimony, since the exchange was unrelated to Caruana Galizia’s blogpost.

Abela tried to extract concrete replies from Caruana Galizia about the reliability of her source. “The fact that you didn’t get an answer from Degiorgo or Balzan, means that you treated the ‘word about town’ as a fact?”

At this point, Caruana Galizia retorted: “don’t you understand the media?” to which Magistrate Francesco Depasquale called on the defendant to show respect.

“My blog is a completely different style from a newspaper, they’re held to account on a different set of standards… I don’t see where the libel is here, and where the damages occur from my allegation that they were going to sell the newspaper.”