The dehumanising campaign initiated by political leaders was sustained by the media owned or controlled by the senior political figures concerned. Overwhelmingly this pressure came from the media owned and controlled by the Labour Party. But it was also true for some time of the media owned and controlled by the Nationalist Party whose former leader was also the subject of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s investigations and whose response to the accusations was in the same vein as that more usually expected from the Labour Party.
The Public Broadcasting Services (PBS), the national broadcaster in Malta, contributed to Daphne’s isolation. While she was among Malta’s main and most followed journalists, the national broadcaster did not investigate or follow the stories she broke, such as the Panama Papers and the Pilatus Bank. At best, PBS operates as the government’s marketing department that sometimes lends itself to become a partisan tool to neutralise voices and views that are in conflict with the government’s.
TV media were used to stalk Daphne Caruana Galizia, portray her as awkward or as hiding from scrutiny. They lampooned her, persecuted her, falsely accused her and her relatives and sought to isolate her.