The Labour leader and Catholic Church radio RTK's journalist – Part I
Illostra, issa ghandi wahda mole l-ARTIKEJ. Issa m'ghandix bzonn il-Fader Gordinn.
An exchange of emails (from Gmail addresses) between Joseph Muscat and Sabrina Agius, a journalist who works at Radju tal-Knisja (RTK), has been leaked to the press. And Joseph Muscat has gone ABSOLUTELY BALLISTIC.
He has accused the government of hacking (which was strenuously denied), thrown himself down on the floor and turned rigid with rage, turned purple, bounced off the walls, and made every sort of attempt at distracting us from the CONTENT of those emails, which is fascinating.
Sabrina Agius is clearly the Labour Party’s mole at RTK. She passes on information about what’s happening in her place of employment, leaking confidential matters to the Opposition leader to the detriment of her employers – you know, the ones who give her a cheque at the end of the month.
Can we use this, Joseph Muscat asks Ms Agius, or will you get into trouble?
When she indicates her wish to leave her job because she doesn’t like the way she is treated, he tells her to hang on in there because the Labour Party needs her in the RTK newsroom.
Then he adds: how I wish you could get into The Times
Ms Agius tells the Labour leader that she’s thinking of applying for an advertised position as journalist/editor at the state broadcaster, and what does he think?
The Labour leader gives her his full permission: “ok applikka”
Sabrina Agius offers her Great Leader a hot deal. If he helps promote her as a Labour candidate in the general election, she will put all her resources – or rather, her church radio employer’s resources – at the Labour Party’s disposal, investigating the stories the Labour Party wishes her to investigate:
Jekk ghandek bzonni hawn utilizzani bl-ahjar mod. Dan Jista jsir permezz ta’ tip offs ghal investigazzjonijiet ghall-istejjer.
Imma jien ukoll ghandi bzonn l-ghajnuna tieghek biex in-nies jibew ukoll isiru jafuni
Just before these emails were leaked, Ms Agius took industrial action against her employers for passing her over for promotion to editor.
Can you imagine the nerve? I’m sorry to have to say it, but typical Labour.
You use your employer’s time, money and resources to serve your political patron’s interests, undermining and betraying your employer in the process, and then when they pass you over for promotion (when they don’t even know what you are up to yet), you sue their asses.
Now she isn’t only going to have that industrial action blow up in her face, but she’s going to lose her job, Joseph and his Partit tal-Iskip are going to lose their RTK plant, and she’s never going to get another job in the media again, unless it’s Super One, which kind of defeats Joseph’s purpose of using her in enemy newsrooms.
The full text of these emails follows. I’ve taken the time and trouble to type them off the PDF scan in chronological order so that they are coherent. Thank you? It’s my pleasure. I mean it.
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Well done, Daphne!
[Daphne – Oh, I didn’t do anything other than sort through and type out the emails in the PDF scan uploaded in the media elsewhere. ]
“Imma jien ukoll ghandi bzonn l-ghajnuna tieghek biex in-nies jibew ukoll isiru jafuni”
Send some nice flowers and a thank-you card to Daphne.
The poor woman must really be biting her tongue at the moment.
What about the reporters planted within The Times newsroom? Or the civil servants leaking all kinds if confidential information, falsely hoping for a promotion once the MLP wins the 2012 /2013 elections?
Rather than sitting down and brainstorming to come out with at least one decent policy, Joseph Muscat has wasted the last three years in scheming, changing logos, issuing threats, and taking advantage of the immaturity and madness of some government MPs.
His shallow ethics were solidified once he was recruited at Super One. I assume that he thinks this is the norm.
However, he is now showing signs of anxiety and seems to becoming desperate. The accusation that you attacked his kids (spread around through his disciple Jeffrey) is a clear sign of despair.
And which reporters are these exactly? Come on, name and shame…
[Daphne – How does shame come into it? Or is whistleblowing now a shameful act for certain politicians?]
Kemm qed nitpaxxa nara t-terrimot li holoq Joseph.
U min jaf x’terremot ghandu d-dar, wara dak il-“flirting” li hareg.
Kemm hu stupidu, jahasra.
Joseph was scheming with his mole in RTK, while all along he had one at Mile End.
RTK tolerates a lot for a Catholic Churched-owned radio. We had separated persons or divorcees speaking their minds on the station during the divorce debate, Robert Musumeci is a resident expert, there were and there are ex-presenters from the MLP and PN stables, but nobody crosses this line of grave disloyalty and expects to be treated as if nothing happened.
Maria Muscat once led a mass resignation in the station and they thought they would bring the station to its knees, but their resignations were accepted.
Sabrina Agius made the mistake of trying to serve two masters at one go – one of them only for her cheque at the end of the month – hoping to be a candidate for the PL.
Shouldn’t RTK ask for an investigation by the relevant authorities? Which in this case should also include the Office for Fair Competition? And shouldn’t the people who donate money to ONE, including sponsors, start asking themselves some real questions?
It’s hilarious when one considers what’s really going on in their warped little minds, here they are double-dealing each other, knowing their message is somewhat ignored due its blatant lack of substance.
The solution? Infiltrate the local pluralistic scenario, imperfect it may be, and subdue it to a hard sell technique.
This is even better than the elves congratulating themselves in August.
Jekk intambru bizzejjed, xi hadd jibda’ jisma’, u halluna mill-policies, dawk ghan-Nazzjonalisti.
“RTK tolerates a lot for a Catholic Church -owned radio“.
Would you believe it – Manual Mallia also was invited to speak on RTK recently – him too. Incredible.
“Utilizzani fejn trid”, qaltlu s’sinjura Agius. “Use me wherever it pleases you.”
Joseph, after the big reveal: “Ghalissa jkolli nitfghak ma’ Charlon tnaddaflu l-ufficju u mbaghad forsi tigi tnaddaf tieghi ukoll. Tinsiex ghandi l-Joseph Cuschieri jiffittani ghal job wkoll.”
“Imbaghad forsi naghmel bik bhal ma kien ghamel Bill ma’ Lewinsky.”
Apparently, she’s his ghost writer for parliamentary questions, isn’t Michelle enough? Or maybe her workload increased with the traffic of PQs (parliamentary questions) to be handed down to his dream team.
The ex-head of news doing what he does best. Spin.
So much for her loyality to her employers. Truth is, God only knows how many civil servants have been doning exactly the same thing – particulalry those occupying posts in sensitive departments.
Sabrina Agius’s journalistic career unfortunately has no future now that all this correspondence has been made public.
However, I would suggest to her one of these two options: applying for a job with Malta Today or better still, renting a room in Gzira as her official place of work.
Both should give her the same level of job satisfaction.
Malta’s equivalent of Stella Rimington and Liz Manningham-Buller.
How pathetic.
And a would-be Lewinsky.
Possibly.
Unbelievable! Simply unbelievable!
Quite frankly I think there is more to it.
Look at all the ‘smilies’, exclamation marks, and the totally inappropriate flirtatious tone she uses, or the familiarity of calling the party leader ‘Joseph’. I’m quite sure she has the hots for him. He’s playing hard to get with his short/direct answers.
oh love :)
“The full text of these emails follows. I’ve taken the time and trouble to type them off the PDF scan in chronological order so that they are coherent. Thank you? It’s my pleasure. I mean it.”
Let us say that the least we can do is to forgive you for putting them in reverse order.
But we thank you for publishing all this. This is true journalism.
[Daphne – They are not in the reverse order. I uploaded them purposedly that way, so that you can begin reading from the top. People always go to the top headline first.]
It would have been true journalism should she have published them the day she got them, and not waited for the leader of the opposition to raise this matter.
[Daphne – ?]
Did you have these transcripts before yesterday? Before the whole of Malta knew that Joseph Muscat had his email hacked?
[Daphne – As if. But The Times probably did. At least, that’s what Muscat has claimed. Read my piece carefully. I got them off the media. They’re on maltarightnow.com. Typical. Make an assumption that fits with the theory in your brain, conclude it’s fact then take it from there.]
The upload of your story was timed as though you waited for his statement. Like you said, I made an assumption which supported this idea and it was wrong.
I still think that the fact that these transcripts have now become public domain is a breach of ethics in itself. You may put forward the argument that these are but means to an end. However, you cannot deny that the ‘means’ were not obtained legally.
[Daphne – Read my latest post. If you’re at work and sending emails, those emails belong to the company you work for. That’s one of the reasons why company internal servers are regularly checked.]
I suppose you fully support Berlusconi’s Legge Bavaglio and join him in your condemnation of the free press publishing his phone calls then?
If such things are of public interest, it is only right that they are published. What’s more, I certainly appreciate having the original document available to verify any conclusions made.
Breach of ethics?
Something similar happens in Italy everyday.
The majority of Italians want the situation to remain as it is.
They know that if such provision of information is restricted, a grey area of people in the know would be created, leading to blackmail and dossier building.
Let alone the public’s right to judgement of character.
How did you conclude that the emails were not obtained legally?
And do the ethics – or, rather, lack thereof – of Sabrina Agius and Joseph Muscat not worry you at all?
“I still think that the fact that these transcripts have now become public domain is a breach of ethics in itself.”
RTK stands for Right To Know, we have that right in this case.
On other posts Daphne is asking for the resignation of JPO or something to that effect.
If the Malta Labour Party wants to get elected it needs to kick Joseph Muscat out and get some decent person to run the alternative government.
Scheming with journalists can get you into government , but a prime minister needs much more than plain PR.
We need a decent opposition with decent alternatives to govern our country.
As far as first-time voters are concerned this is just the beginning of the end for Joseph.
No one can convince them that Joseph’s computer was hacked by the secret police.
One told me: “If that journalist left her desk for a a couple of minutes and left her computer logged on, as many of us do, all one has to do is to enter Gmail, print and pick up the evidence.”
I don’t – I go to the oldest ‘unread’ one first, so I can keep related posts in chronological order. But don’t worry Daphne……you only confused me for a second or two before I had my coffee this morning!
Now I would call this the “all in the Labour family jamboree.” If all else fails, bring in the GWU.
And now it’s the goverments fault that they used an ‘easy peasy’ password on their Gmail accounts and that someone copy/pasted their correspondence? Gmail didn’t even give in to China’s goverment pressure to hand over passwords.
I`d say its Ms Agius’s email which got hacked, because if it was Joseph Muscat’s, then oh, we`d have a lot more PDFs to share, wouldn’t we.
Joseph Muscat must be blushing at this revelation – if he’s capable of shame, that is.
Now that her cover is blown, Ms Agius will probably be asked to move along and leave RTK in peace.
Thanks again for the real story, Daphne. The Times really twists around the truth, trying at best not to say the truth on this article.
At least, that’s the perception I got when I read it, being decieved by the headline.
‘Joseph Muscat complains of hacking’: yes, just like I complained when I was 7 years old that I didn’t want soup.
[Daphne – I can’t understand how The Times thinks it can report Joseph Muscat’s reaction to the email reveal without giving their readers a transcript of the emails themselves. THAT and not Joseph Muscat’s reaction, is the story. I’m bewildered.]
Gh http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20091011/local/unfaded-memories-of-black-monday.277047 )
Had Sabrina Agius worked at The Times in 1979, would she have helped out by chucking inflammable liquid about?
I have lost all faith in The Times. There were signs of life this week but it’s dead in the water once again. No Pulitzer for their journalistic standards that’s for sure
The transcripts are available in PDF format – that’s where I found them.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20111019/local/joseph-muscat-complains-of-hacking-demands-investigation.389857
(at the end of the article)
Pedant alert: RTK — Radju ta’ Kulhadd (not tal-Knisja).
I am frankly not surprised for that would mean that Joseph Muscat has a moral centre.
Can you imagine Lawrence Gonzi doing anything of the sort?
Remember that Joseph is a Labour politician, i.e., anything goes.
Daqqa ta’ harta Guz din (heq skuzani – Joseph ridtni nsejjahlek).
Kompli uri li int “perfett” u nergghu nirbhu l-elezjoni li gejja. Ghadhek hafna lura fil-maturita’ politika u ghalkemm il PN ghandhom hafna difetti, ma hemmx paragun bejnek u bejn Gonzi.
Nixtieq naf kif ser jehodha l-Arcisqof din. Din titfa r-relazzjoni bejn Labour u Knisja mitt sena lura.
1. What’s definitely illegal is her divulging of confidential information regarding her employer to Joseph Muscat.
2. Is it also probable that Gino Cauchi had a similar agreement with the MLP when he worked in the PBS newsroom, before becoming an MLP candidate? “ghalissa ghandna bzonnok hemm, imbaghad nohorguk ghall-elezzjoni”
Sabrina Agius is Lorry Sant’s niece.
Blue blood.
Now that sheds some light on the nature of the leaks, and why Mons. Joseph Muscat is beside himself.
Mhux ahjar imur jghid ir-ruzarju fuq Radju Maria?
Class will out.
So is Mummy Lorry Sant’s sister?
Some of the emails are aptly titled: Gmail – Tgerfix.
Wow….almost better thank Wikileaks….RTKleaks!
So Joseph Muscat wants us to trust him and make him prime minister, while he manipulates situations this way. Disgusting.
Xi gmiel, eh.
Joseph prim ministru. U Sabrina ministru.
Mur ara il-mummy x’bokka biha.
Zomm naqra, Sabrina. Wara min imiss, please. Ghal gol hajt.
This case shows Joseph Muscat as a manipulator of people. In fact, judging from the recent events, where we have seen Gino Cauchi attack Lou Bondi, Alfred Sant attack the EU stability fund, etc, I am now confirming that Joseph uses a chess approach, in which he positions his pieces according to his strategy, using them as “paraventu” (courtesy: Alfred Sant).
It also shows how little respect Mr. Muscat has shown to a woman who fancies him and wants to please him.
Had Mr. Muscat shown any respect to the lady, he would never have interfered with her work ethics. This shows that he has little ethics of his own.
No wonder Joseph Muscat went ballistic when emails were published.
He can be quite manipulative. And she had the cheek to go to an Employment Tribunal as she said she was bypassed for promotion; what about her loyalty to her employer, confidentiality, use of company time, you name it she did it. It’s RTK who should take her to court.
I will not be surprised if Agius continues with her action at the Employment Tribunal and wins a pretty sum to compensate for what may be perceived as an injustice.
Fits in with the candidate who expects to abuse his medical pass, the representative whose pq’s to the minister of health expose his knack for clientelism, another representative who expects to keep another sovereign nation’s assets to himself, and a shadow justice minister who expects a minor to be considered an adult.
Not to mention Nikita’s erudite economy with words, Nicola’s desdomonic Indignata and the ghosts of Christmas past having a go at carol singing.
Scrap all ye panto scripts.
Pity about the leak. She could have replaced the journalist who was recently fired from The Times…
Dear Joseph
A word of advice, please stop measuring your opponents by your own yardstick.
Unlike you and your lot, the PN are master strategists, if they had hacked your e-mail account they would not have shown their hand at this stage, but rather they would have waited till maybe after the next election.
If you wish to succeed in politics you have to stop thinking like a “reporter” whose primary objective is always short term in nature (filling the next edition) and start thinking longer term.
I have a feeling that come next election, the PN are going to blow you out of the water and by then you will have wasted all your ammunition.
Why was some text removed from the emails?
[Daphne – It wasn’t.]
Yes it was Daphne. If you go to the original pdf documents you’d find some pages missing. In fact when Muscat asked her to draft some PQs for him, that is totally out of context. We don’t know what they were talking about before he asked her to draft some PQs.
http://normanvella.blogspot.com/2011/10/hacking-ta-emails.html
The Times should start cleaning up all the moles who let anti-government elves publish comments without reservation but censor heavily (or outright ban) any anti-LP comments.
I have long insisted that The Times has been effectively infiltrated by Labour moles. If they succeeded with RTK, a much smaller organizattion than The Times, imagine how many are controlling what makes ‘headline news’ and what good news is relegated to back pages of the Times!
Illum Tonio Portughese fuq l-RTK kellu lil Austin Sammut, Roger Degiorgio (sid Malta Today) u Wenzu Mintoff. Kien jonqos Manuel Micallef, biex inpaxxu sew lil Joseph u forsi jaghtina xi chairmanship jew ambaxxata la jitla fil-gvern.
Ma tistghux tqabluha ma’ Lewinsky ghax Ms Agius qas bit-toma ma baqat.
Joseph Joseph… Kemm faddallu x’jitghallem jahasra. Pruvajt tinqeda b’gurnalista (u hi bih) waqt li qieghed fl-Oppozizzjoni, ahseb u ara kieku tkunu fil-gvern.