Muscat emails: did public interest outweigh breach of privacy?

It is always a big decision for newspapers to reveal confidential information that might not have been procured legally or through public channels and a conundrum for editors whether to turn down anything remotely gossipy or confidential news that otherwise would never see the light of day.

The question for the head of news at Media.Link, the Nationalist party media, is whether he felt that the public interest was better served, and greater than the breach of privacy that might have resulted, by revealing a private conversation between a journalist and the Opposition leader.

At 9:57pm on Wednesday evening, after Muscat asked the Speaker of the House to investigate an alleged hacking of his emails, Nathaniel Attard accused the Labour Party of running a campaign to prove that public broadcasting was biased against the PL.

“The way the correspondence was given to us did not breach in any way the law,” he told MaltaToday yesterday. “I cannot be sure of the way the source procured the emails, but I was assured by the source that the way the emails were procured did not break the law. We got legal advice on the matter.”

A legal source who spoke to MaltaToday offered a different view on the procurement of the emails: “If a letter is illegally intercepted by an unintended recipient, they are handling stolen goods. Whether this stands for email is a different matter altogether.”

Since the journalist used a Gmail account and not her work server email, her employers did not have legal access to the account. ‘Hacking’ is a lofty accusation, one which implies expert and targeted access. It is more likely that someone chanced upon Sabrina Agius’s open email account on her work desktop. Anybody with a grind to axe thrives on such carelessness.

What's sure is that neither Muscat nor Agius gave their consent to the printing and publication of their private emails. Illegality, computer misuse, or simply bad form on part of a snooping colleague (no honour among reporters...?) - blogger and lawyer Jacques Zammit takes this further on akkuza.com.

Even if this is what happened, the alleged breach of privacy that may have taken place must be weighed against the public interest.

Nathaniel Attard answered this question with a question:

“Journalistically, if one had information showing Joseph Muscat had had a long-term 11-month email discussion with a journalist, showing that he tried to get her ‘planted’ by telling ‘I need you as head of news of RTK’ or ‘I need you in The Times’ or at PBS… wouldn’t you publish it?

“The value of the story also includes the fact that the journalist was revealing private matters concerning her employer to the Opposition leader… and that she was being used politically by Muscat which is part of his campaign to gain a foothold in independent newsrooms.”

But there is also the matter of privacy. Shouldn’t journalists be allowed the right to private conversations with anybody, politicians included? Why should independent newsrooms be treated different from party media journalists, who as employees of the party, enjoy direct contact with ministers?

“Party journalists are employed directly by parties themselves,” Attard says, to underline that contact between journalist-employee and politician-employer tends to be inevitable. “But Muscat complains about the unfairness of public broadcasting towards Labour when he is politically using other journalists, as the emails show.”

As the past two weeks prove – Peppi Azzopardi’s coaching of Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando, Labour’s complaint to the BA over Lou Bondì, the Times’ sacking of a junior reporter and MaltaToday’s coverage of the controversial sacking and the ensuing editorial retaliation in the Sunday Times, and Inkontri’s free-for-all between media ‘luminaries’ – this latest episode of media contact with politicians is just another instalment of this tired saga.

Attard’s decision of course has to be judged against the actual content of the emails, the published excerpts of which show scant references to various matters concerning the media and Sabrina Agius’s personal situation inside Church radio RTK.

In the emails Muscat appears to enjoy the journalist’s confidence, and throughout the email exchange he imparts bits of advice and light-hearted banter – more bland chit-chat than policy discussion.

·      A first conversation, dated October 2010, contains unclear references to Agius’s political interest in contesting the elections. But there are suggestions that this is only treated lightly and as a joke when she says she will become Muscat’s youngest minister, with a smiley punctuating the quip for good measure.

·      Round about this time, Media Centre had stopped printing its weekly newspaper Il-Gensillum, at which point Agius appears concerned she might lose her employment. She asks him whether she should apply for a post at PBS.

·      She also says she is available for tip-offs on investigations. The language is blunt, but like many journalists, she asks politicians to pass on fodder for stories they can write about.

·      What is more evident are Agius’s complaints of her employers’ treatment of employees. In January 2011 Muscat tells her it’s good that she has a “social conscience” when she is asked to sack two journalists but also advises her she is “no union”.

·      The conversation also shows Agius was troubled by her treatment at work, ostensibly because she fell foul of the sensitivities of her Catholic employers in the run-up to the divorce referendum campaign. As she tells Muscat that she is seeking work elsewhere, the Labour leader tells her not to rush.

·      In March 2011 she congratulated Muscat after Labour’s motion for a referendum on divorce had passed in parliament, and tells him she’s “almost” in favour of divorce.

·      She also reveals to him that Church spokesperson and media director Kevin Papagiorcopulo is working as a spokesperson for anti-divorce movement Le Ghad-Divorzju, and that this movement is financed by the Church.

·      In April 2011, it appears Agius applied for a post with The Times and that Muscat tells her he wished she gets the job.

The last weeks had been dominated by accusations from various sides of how independent media houses are aligning themselves politically ahead of the 2013 general election, and the dominance of public broadcasting by media houses like Where's Everybody and their alleged impartiality.

Writing on maltarightnow.com, Attard said the correspondence between Muscat and Agius meant that the Labour leader was currying favour with journalists in other media houses, who support Labour. Agius herself is currently pursuing a complaint against Church media house Media Centre, which runs RTK, over allegations that she was politically discriminated against and that she was unfairly denied a promotion from acting head to head of RTK news.

Even if the news value here amounts to a glimpse into the way the Opposition leader held a candid, 11-month email exchange with a young journalist, its effects have been devastating for Agius. Like Matt Bonanno, journalists are the victims yet again of a big political clash that has little to do with the journalists who are not interested in doing anybody's bidding.