The heads of eight of the world’s largest news organisations have called for the European commission to investigate the murder of Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia and the independence of the media in Malta. The editors and directors have written a letter to Frans Timmermans, the first vice-president of the commission, which describes the murder of Caruana Galizia as “shocking” and an “appalling reminder” of the dangers that journalists and citizens practising journalism face as they try to uncover corruption and criminal behaviour.

The signatories include Katharine Viner, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, Jérôme Fenoglio, director of Le Monde, and James Harding, the director of news and current affairs at the BBC.

Caruana Galizia was killed last month by a car bomb near her home. She had led an investigation into corruption in Malta using the Panama Papers – with the government and the opposition implicated – and the readership for her blogposts often exceeded the circulation of the country’s newspapers.(theguardian)…[+]