Institute of Maltese Journalists

The penultimate paragraph of your editorial last Sunday does not do justice to the Institute of Maltese Journalists or the members who sit on its council. It hurts to read that “the organisation that purports to represent journalists is devoid of them”.

The IGM is proud of its achievements over the past 21 years. The list is too long to mention here, but it is thanks to the IGM that changes which benefit journalists today have been enacted.

These include amendments to the Press Act, among them introduction of confidentiality of the source, qualified privilege, the right to information as well as important changes to the laws of libel.

The IGM was also responsible for setting up the Press Ethics Commission, which over the years has been chaired by highly respected personalities including Judge Wallace Gulia, Miriam Spiteri Debono, Chief Justice Emeritus Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici, Kevin Aquilina and its current chair, Kevin Dingli.

Incidentally, the commission is currently working on a new Code of Ethics by incorporating the press codes of all the media organisations in Malta, plus references to the latest media phenomena.

We invite the editor of The Sunday Times to make his contribution to this latest draft Code of Journalistic Ethics along with other members of the media who are not IGM members but have also made a valid contribution.

As to the reference on the IGM council’s composition, three of its eight members are full-time journalists. A fourth is another former editor, currently a freelancer with a heavier workload than many full-time journalists. Two other members are former editors of leading publications, and another a former deputy editor of your own newspaper.

The other member is a sports editor of a leading TV station and secretary of a major European sports journalism body.

So the IGM, with over 110 members, has a council with a good mixture of full-time and part-time journalists, but it is important to point out that a council like ours needs members who are freelancers or retired because they can dedicate more time to the organisation voluntarily than others with a full-time job.

Of course, we would love and welcome full-time journalists on board. The problem is that some of them prefer to act as armchair critics rather than lend their support to an organisation they proclaim to respect or only want to be seen associated with at certain times of the year.

Not bad for an “organisation that purports to represent journalists” but is allegedly “devoid of them”.

Editor’s note: Reluctantly it should be pointed out that some of the members referred to by Mr Vella – who for years has been a dedicated member of the Malta Press Club and IGM – work in an industry that conflicts with true journalism.

As for the Press Ethics Commission, no consultation is held with editors over who heads it and this may be one of the reasons why, unfortunately, it does not have sufficient confidence within the industry. There are other reasons too, which are less acceptable.