The Minister for Justice and the one for Education (that’s two different people, not the result of a reshuffle), in obvious and hasty reaction to the Opposition’s Private Member’s Bill to put the bludgeon of garnishee orders out of the reach of belligerent politicians, proudly unveiled a new media-themed Bill a few days ago.

Clearly, the Bill was prepared for them, entirely without input from or consultation with the players in the media, quite some time in advance, but no-one is going to convince me, or anyone else, that the timing was anything but reactionary, an epithet that can be applied to the Bill itself.

The objects and reasons of the Bill are worthy of Orwell at his finest.

It seeks – this far laudably – to abolish criminal libel and to put beyond use that to which their colleague Chris Cardona chose to resort in seeking to bully a journalist recently.

Those are the good bits, but lurking within the language, devilishly skulking in the detail, are the bad bits, among which is the craven “saving” of current criminal libel cases, allowing them to go on, despite the fact that respected practitioners of constitutional law look on this with horror.

Website operators, if this misconceived piece of legislation goes through the House without change, will soon have to register themselves with the Media Registrar, a new beast assuming the mantle of the Press Registrar and expanding his reach.

If they don’t, they can be fined and – in effect – they will not qualify as journalists, which means that the protection against revealing sources afforded to journalists will not work in their favour.

I wonder what inspired this piece of Big Brotherly affection.

One has to ask, how, and why, pray tell Ministers Bonnici and Bartolo, is the Fourth Estate supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about the new law?

The new law will take libel cases out of the Court of Magistrates, where costs are relatively lower and procedures less constrained by the formality inherent in written defences before the Civil Court.

There is no advantage to having a libel case heard by a judge rather than a magistrate as their academic and legal qualification is pretty much identical, so the reasoning behind kicking the cases upstairs, figuratively and literally, must be something else.

And when politicians of a certain stripe do something they need not do, you can bet your bottom dollar they have some agenda nicely concealed about their person.

The Orwellian language excels itself when we are told that the Bill includes provisions which strengthen freedom of the media.

One has to ask, how and why, pray tell us Ministers Owen Bonnici and Evarist Bartolo, is the Fourth Estate supposed to feel all warm and fuzzy about the new law? Damages are being doubled, court costs are being increased, and what was a pretty clear Press Act has been turned into an exercise in vagueness and over-regulation.

The above-referenced Big Brother is being given flesh and blood, and the threat of high damages is being used to make editors roll over and cravenly apologise and shell out €1,000, instead of risking many more thousands.

To my mind, all this sounds a bitlike plea-bargaining from a position of weakness.

The market in potential plaintiffs has been expanded to a marked extent, because heirs of allegedly libelled individuals now have grounds for action, presumably because they have been inspired by the shade of their dead relative to reach for a brief.

For this, and much else, “we the people”, represented by those who should guard our guardians, are supposed to tug our forelocks and say thank you, nicely?

Donald Trump, leader of our Brave New Post-Truth World and Fan Number One of the free press, would be proud to make this an executive order.

Andrew Borg-Cardona graduated as a lawyer in 1979 with a doctoral thesis titled ‘The Law of Criminal Libel – a Comparative Study’.