I’ll give you one major example from the Pulitzer-Prize-winning Panama Papers: the ICIJ journalists have access to millions of documents – bank statements, passports, emails, private correspondence, company details – which fiscal authorities and the police would kill for.

THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO GIVE ANY DETAILS TO GOVERNMENT OR POLICE AUTHORITIES AND ARE OBLIGED TO SIGN A CONTRACT COMMITTING THEMSELVES TO THAT.

Work out why.

You clearly have no idea of what life in a normal democracy is meant to be like. I’ll explain. In a normal democracy, when a journalist reports on the scandalous and criminal behaviour of people in government, citizens do not yell at the journalist SHOW ME PROOF.

They bay at the scandalous politicians – and then they bay at the police if they fail to act.

Put simply: if those bastards survive this, Malta won’t.

Thank you. In that case all the protagonists citing the magisterial inquiry – Keith Schembri, Joseph Muscat, Konrad Mizzi and Seyed Ali Sadr Hasheminejad – are acting all anal with journalists.