A magistrate has rejected a request by Construct Furniture’s directors for an investigation into the sources that leaked the conclusions of an inquiry into the death of a teenage employee at the company.
Last month, this newspaper reported that company director John Agius and his relatives were expected to face criminal charges for the involuntary homicide last year of Matthew Bartolo, 17. Mr Bartolo, from Kirkop, died when he was operating a woodworking machine used to manufacture doors at the Construct Furniture premises.
The teenager got caught in the machine and died.
The inquiry concluded the company had failed to follow health and safety procedures and forged his signatures on training sheets after his death.
Mr Agius, his daughter Amanda Cefai and her husband, James Cefai, a foreman at the company – all facing charges – subsequently asked the courts to take the necessary steps regarding whoever had passed the information to The Sunday Times of Malta, including ordering the Police Commissioner to investigate how the inquiry, or parts of it, had been leaked.
Magistrate Joe Mifsud noted: “The report dealt with a limited part of the findings. Nobody should expect that in a democratic society, an inquiring magistrate should order the police to suppress journalists doing their work.” Magistrate Mifsud quoted national and foreign jurisprudence stating that the press rendered a great public service by publishing reports surrounding alleged crimes.
The protection of journalistic sources was a basic condition for press freedom. Without such protection, sources might be deterred from assisting the press in informing the public on matters of public interest, he noted.
“It is not the function of the courts to act as censors of the press,” the magistrate said, adding that national courts possessed the appropriate experience and training to enable them to resist any outside influence.
An order of source disclosure could have a potentially “chilling effect”, Magistrate Mifsud said.
The magistrate also noted: “It is necessary to take the greatest care in assessing the need, in a democratic society, to punish journalists for using information obtained through a breach of the secrecy of an investigation or a breach of professional confidence when those journalists are contributing to a public debate of such importance and are thereby playing their role as ‘watchdogs’ of democracy”.
The conclusions draw on yet another international case: “The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas… and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out … we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe”.