Newspaper criticised by court for shoddy journalism

A court has ordered the Malta Independent on Sunday to pay €3,000 in damages to three engineers after it ruled that the newspaper had acted negligently when it published an article about a visit to the Singapore Grand Prix by the WSC CEO in 2014. 

Engineers Frederick Azzopardi, Stefan Riolo and Robert Schembri, CEO and executive director of the Water Services Corporation and executive director of Enemalta, respectively, had filed the libel suit against editor David Lindsay after the Sunday newspaper had failed to include replies to questions sent to the WSC officials, in spite of them having been received by the newspaper prior to publication of the article. 

In a judgment handed down today, Magistrate Francesco Depasquale noted that the article was subtitled with the words "Were tickets paid for with taxpayers' money?" and had raised the question of whether the three men, who were attending a conference in Singapore, had outstayed their official visit and attended a Formula One race at the taxpayer’s expense. 

It had been proven that the three engineers had been invited to attend the Singapore International Water Week Seminar in Singapore between September 18 and 19, 2013. Guests at the seminar had also been offered discounted prices for the Formula One race and so Azzopardi, Riolo and Schembri had chosen to extend their stay in Singapore to attend the race. 

The three men had paid for their extended stay and for the race tickets out of their own pocket. 

The newspaper had sent questions to the men, however neither of the two journalists who had been covering the story had been at work when the reply was received. As a result, the newspaper had published the article, in spite of having received the answers, due to the editor not being aware of this. 

After this glaring omission had come to light, the newspaper had published another story about it having received a reply, but this article had contained neither an apology nor had it specified that the replies were received before the publication of the offending article, noted the court. 

The court ruled that negligence by the newspaper and its journalists had resulted in the publication of unverified allegations, and ordered it to pay damages.