Journalism comes in many forms. Writing puffs about TV presenters is journalism. So is outing hapless celebrities over their sex lives, or researching long-form pieces about the future of the NHS. And so is sacrificing your life to warn people that their country has been taken over by gangsters. Daphne Caruana Galizia was this sort of journalist: one of the most courageous and outspoken people of our age. Here’s one of the last things she ever wrote about the Maltese government, in October 2017: “Do your worst, you bastards, until the only option left to you is to take out a contract on my life.”
At the very moment when Daphne Caruana Galizia pressed “send” on these words, a contract had indeed been taken out on her life, and her murderers were searching for ways to kill her. Finally they managed to plant 400g of TNT under the seat of her car. One of the gang, from a boat offshore, watched her drive down the seaside road near her house. Then he sent the phone message “#REL1=ON”, which ignited the bomb. Newspaper reports at the time said Daphne died instantly. If only: an eyewitness said she was screaming for several seconds before the car’s petrol tank exploded. A few minutes later her son Matthew, racing out to see what had happened, found the ground around him covered with bits of her body.
