Support The Shift – for positive change. Together.

We are celebrating The Shift’s 5-year anniversary, a project that started with you, our readers. We have come this far, and now we need your support to make sure our work can continue.

Five years of ground-breaking stories. Five years of holding power to account. Five years of in-depth investigations exposing countless stories of corruption, crime, and wrongdoing.

Five years of incisive political commentary. Five years of championing press freedom. Five years of winning multiple international awards thanks to our commitment and determination to get to the bottom of every story we pursue.

Founded in the wake of the assassination of slain journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia, The Shift is an unequivocal and powerful message to those who assassinated her – if you kill a journalist for exposing wrongdoing, we will make sure the story is not silenced.

We will make sure the truth will emerge. It is the only real defence against those who think they can bury corruption by murdering journalists.

The Shift was founded by Caroline Muscat, an international award-winning journalist. Her awards are unique to the journalism sector in Malta, such as the Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Award for Independence and the US Embassy Award for Courage, among others.

A catalyst for change

Focusing on in-depth investigations and press freedom advocacy, we aim to be a catalyst in shifting the media landscape in Malta and pushing back against the suppression of our democracy.

Independent journalism in Malta is at a critical stage in a landscape dominated by political party ownership and government dominance of the public sphere. There’s news, but is it what you need to know to make informed decisions, or is it what the government wants you to hear to maintain its grip on power?

Bringing these ground-breaking stories to you in a hostile environment is extremely challenging, but we are not daunted by adversity.

We are encouraged by the support you have always given us, so we are reaching out to you now to make sure that we can start another year stronger and bolder than ever.

We don’t stall on hard-hitting investigations when doors are shut. We don’t change or remove our stories when we are bullied or threatened with financially crippling libel suits (SLAPP suits). And we are proud to have never lost a single libel case because of our thorough fact-verification process.

We’ve made a difference

Our stories have impact because we follow through till the end. The Shift’s investigation into the White Flag scam forced the government to terminate its contract with the con man running the scam.

We have brought you stories on the scandalous hospital deal with Vitals Global Healthcare and Steward Healthcare – a deal worth billions that was acquired for only €1. An inquiry was launched, as well as a court case demanding the return of public hospitals to the people.

Our investigation into Joseph Muscat’s online hate machine was crucial to the public inquiry on the role of the government’s propaganda in the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. It resulted in recommendations to improve freedom of expression in the country, which we are insisting must be implemented in full.

We exposed Joseph Muscat’s €120,000 secret golden handshake when he was forced out of power, disgraced. We exposed leaked emails that show Konrad Mizzi’s gifts to Electrogas funded by taxpayers. We insist these deals are corrupt, and we demand accountability.

We exposed sexual harassment in The Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, which resulted in the indictment of the perpetrator as well as of the CEO of the orchestra for tampering with evidence. We insist on justice for the victim, and accountability from those who failed to take action to protect their friends and instead covered-up the abuse.

Not to mention the millions in direct orders to cronies that we exposed. Millions channelled to party loyalists while honest businesses cannot compete because procurement rules are bent. Our work helps create a level playing field.

They want to shut us down

Our investigations are so incisive that the government is filing multiple lawsuits against us to deny us information in its latest attempt to cripple The Shift financially.

It costs a minimum of €40,000 to fight back the 40 cases the government launched against us, deploying some 80 lawyers against a single newsroom – 80 lawyers paid by taxpayers to bury the information that the public has a right to know.

The good news is we’re winning, but the massive cost threatens to shut us down.

We are fighting back against the abuse of the law that grants the public’s right to know. We continue to fight thanks to the support you have always shown us. That support is critical to our independence.

This is in line with the commitment we made to you at the start – The Shift is as much your project as it is ours.

We are the only outlet that refuses to accept funding or advertising from the government or political parties, to the point where we even block their Google ads. We don’t take their opinion pieces, and we certainly don’t take their paid content and present it as news. And we aim to keep it that way.

But we need your support.

The journalism and investigations we do cost money. They take up a lot of our work and time. And often, we must involve professionals such as lawyers to interpret legal documents, and accountants to unravel financial information.

We’ve come this far. And our work has resulted in positive change.

But we need to do more. We must do more.

For this reason, we’d like to ask you to consider a special donation on our 5-year anniversary. Your funding ensures that we don’t need to succumb to pressure from government, that we fight for you and nobody else.

Let’s do this. Together.