LabourToday’s contribution to the social-benefits racket investigation: the Nationalists are at fault

In the past few weeks, most of Malta’s independent journalists have been scrambling trying to get information about the social-benefits racket, trying to discover names and connections to uncover the extent of the racket and the fraud. The story was broken out by the Times of Malta and other journalists followed up with their own investigations where they revealed other bits and pieces of information. I revealed a name connected with the racket while Newsbook revealed others and Times of Malta kept revealing even more.

Only MaltaToday was missing from this collective effort by journalists. Instead of investigating the social-benefits racket, MaltaToday, or rather LabourToday, owned by the fraud and pathological liar Saviour Balzan, turned its guns over to the Nationalist Party. The PR trick and the message that MaltaToday is trying to project is obvious: Labour is involved in a mega-corruption scandal, but the PN is also equally corrupt. Even the story itself is completely bonkers – MaltaToday is accusing PN of covering up the scandal after it knew about it 11 days before it broke out. What?

Most of us journalists who were doing our job knew even more than 11 days prior that this story was going to break out, and it was only a matter of getting the right information. Times succeeded in having the information before everyone else. There is nothing unusual in that the PN got to know about the scandal 11 days prior it broke out, but definitely, they did not have the complete information and could barely act on it.

For me, this shows how completely detached the MaltaToday newsroom has become since its last vestige of independence with Matthew Vella has gone out of the window. They aren’t even keeping up with what’s going on, and have ended up working exclusively on fraudulent PR and fake narratives conjured by Saviour Balzan as part of his service to the Labour Party.