Contempt of court claim against Malta Today thrown out

The legislator should seriously consider updating existing rules regarding the secrecy and confidentiality of court proceedings, a magistrate declared when throwing out a contempt of court claim against Malta Today.
That observation was made in two separate but parallel judgments stemming from a series of publications by the newspaper and the online version based on snippets of voice recordings exhibited in evidence during the compilation of evidence against Yorgen Fenech, the alleged accomplice in Daphne Caruana Galizia's murder.
Not only were a number of those secret recordings, made by self-confessed middleman Melvin Theuma, played behind closed doors but the court, presided over by Magistrate Rachel Montebello, further banned copies of documents forming part of the records of the case from being published or shared with third parties extraneous to the proceedings.

Yet, between August and October 2020, Malta Today published a series of four stories which included snippets from those recordings hit by the court ban.
Shortly afterwards, the court registrar filed proceedings against Saviour Balzan and Matthew Vella as Malta Today executive director and executive editor...