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	Abuse Victims Claim They Were Offered Money for Al Jazeera Interview By David Lindsay Malta Independent October 3, 2011 http://www.independent.com.mt/news.asp?newsitemid=133037 In a new twist to what has degenerated into an increasingly sorry state of affairs, a competing section of the media yesterday ran a front page story in which sexual abuse victim Lawrence Grech claims he had been offered money in exchange for an interview with the Al Jazeera television news network during the Pope's visit to Malta, but that the promised payment had never materialised. But what the paper, MaltaToday, failed to report was that it had been the newspaper's own staff journalist, Karl Stagno Navarra, who also works as a local stringer for Al Jazeera, who had offered Mr Grech and fellow abuse victim Joseph Magro money in exchange for an interview with the network, according to the victims themselves. In a recent interview with one of our journalists, which has not yet been published, Mr Grech and Mr Magro state that Mr Stagno Navarra had contacted the victims to meet him at MaltaToday's own offices for an interview with Al Jazeera, and that he had told them that Al Jazeera would offer them money, according to Mr Grech, The two say they had initially refused the offer of money, and that Mr Magro had insisted that his face would not show in the interview. But, they said on Friday, they were persuaded on both counts when Mr Stagno Navarra allegedly told them "whether we wanted it or not, Al Jazeera would pay us money for the interview". They say they eventually agreed and the interview was conducted at a hotel during the Pope's stay in Malta. It was the first time that Mr Magro had showed his face in public in connection with the case. Arriving at the hotel, the two say they met with Mr Stagno Navarra and a cameraperson who works for Where's Everybody, a company in which their former spokesperson and television journalist Lou Bondi is involved, which they said had "surprised them". This, plus the fact that Mr Bondi had informed them a few days before the Pope's arrival that Al Jazeera would be contacting them for an interview, led them to the assumption that Mr Bondi had orchestrated the interview "behind their back". The hiring of a local camera crew, along with the use of a local stringer, is however, standard practice in the media world and this newspaper has verified this to have been the case in this instance. The Al Jazeera crew, Mr Grech and Mr Magro said, had also hired the services of a police officer to keep other journalists from approaching the victims at the hotel. But while the newspaper in its story goes on to insinuate that Mr Bondi had orchestrated the interview and that it had been him who "promised" reimbursement for it, it somewhat incredibly fails to tell of the role its own journalist played in it.
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