The long-time Super One reporter and politician who doesn’t know how the DOI works
He’s worked in the media and politics since 1992 and now claims that he doesn’t know how the government’s Department of Information operates.
In Times of Malta today:
Asked by journalists about the Manuel Mallia case, particularly who had fed the Department of Information wrong information, Dr Muscat said he could not reply as those were DOI procedures he did not know about.
Who does he think he is kidding. His excuses are really just insults. Muscat began working for the Labour Party media in 1992. That’s 22 years ago. And besides that, he worked for a political party and is now the prime minister.
He knows exactly how the government’s Department of Information works in terms of press releases. It doesn’t write them. It just releases them.
The Department of Information gets a press statement from a minister’s secretariat, or from the prime minister’s office, with instructions to release it at this time on that day embargoed until x hours or for immediate publication, copies and pastes it onto the DOI letterhead if required or leaves it on the ministry letterhead if preferred, and emails/faxes it out to all newsrooms on the DOI list. Then it publishes it on the DOI portal.
And that explanation wasn’t for the prime minister, who knows this in the same way I do. It is for the rest of you, who seem to think that the Department of Information actually researches, compiles and writes its own press releases. It doesn’t. It can only release what it is given. That has been the state of play since it was set up.
Under the Nationalists, ministers also released statements directly from their own offices, because direct contact between ministers and journalists was encouraged after the Mintoffian years of going through the DOI and not being permitted contact directly with ministers.
Now this government has returned to a situation of ministerial communication with the press only through the DOI. Why? Because it is more convenient for them when they want to avoid us. But the DOI is still a paper-processing house and completely unnecessary. Instead of doing what Mintoff and KMB did and releasing all government information through the DOI, Muscat’s government should practice the openness of the Fenech Adami and Gonzi administrations and have his ministers release their own communications to the press.
Oh, and while he’s at it, he should inform his energy minister and his head of secretariat that communications of a legal nature in connection with their marriages and their private businesses should be released not by the DOI but by themselves personally over their home address or that of their legal counsel.
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If he doesn’t know how the DOI operates, what does he know?
Jaf idawwar sold. Dak jafu zgur.
Kollha jafu idawru xi haga anki ghal xulxin.
Crikey. That was another toad of a picture.
Do not however let the gingivitis detract your attention from the facial expression. Focus on the eyes and mouth and you will be shocked.
Perhaps next time the journalists should ask him how the Department of Propaganda and National Enlightenment works. I’m sure he knows how that works.
LIAR. He told the reporter he didn’t have a watch, and couldn’t remember the time he was informed of the incident.
Yet he remembers EXACTLY what time John Dalli had called him the day he was thrown out of his job.
Someone please get a closeup of the totally naf watch he constantly wears OVER his cuff like Gianni Agnelli did with his not-naff one.
My thirteen year old terrier sports a better set of gnashers than those.
Sant’s poodle has now became a bull terrier. Look at those teeth, just says it all!
Marija santa amen, bad looks, obesity, corruption, bang bang, hbieb tal-hbieb, a huge disaster in clothing, my god what a mess.
Imma bjond. Allura sabih.
When you are PM what you don’t know, you find out. ‘I don’t know’ aka mummy’s skirt is not good enough for those at the helm.
During the Fenech Adami and Gonzi administrations the DOI used to sometimes refuse to issue a press release which it deemed either too political or not related to public administration (example, the minister’s marriage). But that was when the government actually aspired to achieve some standards.
Does Prime Minister Joseph Muscat want reasonable persons to believe him when he claims that he does not know the procedure followed by the government’s Department of Information when it issues an official press release?
Please, Mr Prime Minister, have the decency to assume your responsibilities with some seriousness.
Joseph Muscat must be the laziest prime minister in Malta’s history.
That was a very pertinent question. I remember Muscat on ‘Ghandi xi Nghid’ last Saturday (that’s 3 days after the incident, though the presenter said it was recorded the day before) trying to defend his thesis of ‘no cover-up’.
I clearly remember him saying (because I was couldn’t believe he was saying so) that the DOI statement was issued as things were evolving there and then in front of the cameras and journalists.
The impression given was that the journalists were updating the DOI. So much so that he even said they (the official side) asked the journalists to keep them updated on developments.
By Saturday, the details of the incident were splashed over all the media and I recall asking myself whose newsroom version was the DOI compiling its statements on?
Now he says he doesn’t know how the DOI collects the information before issuing a statement, because “he doesn’t, and has never worked there”. Why did he commit himself so on that programme then?
A liar and a coward to boot.