I’d like to apologise for the current dearth of blogging but in between a compressed workload, the run up to the day I tie the knot and works in progress chez J’accuse (plus a bachelors to recove from) we’ve found little time to write the many things that have passed through our mind. Meanwhile, to fill the gap… and as an example of our incredible consistency – here’s what we were writing on J’accuse 5 years ago.
“Tra questi documenti, quelli appunto contrassegnati “dai progressivi 112 al 119 con tutte le telefonate della Juventus di Luciano Moggi, la Gea ma anche del guardalinee Enrico Ceniccola, finito nell’inchiesta di Napoli per la partita Lecce-Juve 0-1. “Chiesi a Adamo – dice la donna – dove finivano quest’ultimi elaborati, ottenendo come risposta che di questo non dovevo preoccuparmi“.
Denigrators of the bianconeri have had a great time over the past summer. Reading the news items, following the cases and above all examining the punishments one would think that the only illegal operator in the realm of Italian football is Juve. The supposition was that everyone had been investigated and that the Juve officials were worse off at the end of it. Worse off – even though no proof was found of fixed matches or of actual influence on refereeing – they are playing a dignified season in Serie B and have turned over a new chapter.
The investigations into Telecom Italia’s illegal tapping are now shedding more light on the suspicious “selective victimisation” and it would seem that there is a methodology behind the fact that the only accusations forthcoming were against La Vecchia Signora. It also transpires that the cleanest team in football (false passports aside) are now under investigation for the much feared slealtà sportiva.Apparently Inter were also involved in some illegal spying activity that might have been intended to procure unfair sporting advantage.
As we had said earlier in the year on J’Accuse… there is much that is rotten in the Kingdom of Calcio. The petty measures that were taken until now stank more of jealousy and antipathy than real justice. The current campionato is a sham and the winners will have nothing to be proud of. Just as much as the scudetto sewn onto the Inter shirts this season is the biggest lie in the history of football.
Wait for more. There is no doubt that there will be more.
There was a time when the day after “mass meeting” events would be spent combing the papers comparing snapshot to snapshot of the human flood that would have filled the appointed spot at the appointed time. Pre-election polls in Malta were conducted with an expert off the cuff assessment (if you excuse the oxymoron) of the number of flag waving homini partisani who crammed every nook and cranny of Il-Fosos. That was then – when a silly tune like “We take a chance” could guarantee more votes than a commitment on Waste Recycling and when everybody could dance the night away happy that our economy was boosting and F’par idejn sodi.
I went through the papers – those sympathetic to government and their online version to look for the photos of the “masses” who were supposed to have spent three days of hedonistic remembrance and instead all I could find were close-ups of Lawrence Gonzi and Paul Borg Olivier. Was something being hidden from our prying 80’s mentality? Had the PN masses failed the ultimate fidelity test? Had they not crammed the beloved fosos while singing their anachronistic innu tal-kattolċi u tal-Latini? Apparently not. Here’s the party mouthpiece MaltaRightNow letting the numbers slip while describing part of Prime Minister Gonzi’s speech:
Lista ma tispiċċax illi ġiet elenkata mill-PM u Kap tal-Partit Nazzjonalista Lawrence Gonzi meta indirizza lill-mijiet miġbura fuq il-fosos tal-Furjana għall-mass meeting li bih għalqu l-festi tal-Indipendenza bit-tema ‘Kburin b’pajjiżna, għax nemmnu f’pajjiżna.’
Mijiet. That’s hundreds. Not thousands. Hundreds.
Just saying.
(Happy Independence Day)
Later on J’accuse: More on why Labour is intent on plugging the “PN are too partisan” line, how the PN attempted to rewrite six months of Maltese fence-sitting in the libyan saga, and how telling us that Labour is no good alternative is not exactly our idea of a plan for our future (Pjan ċar u konkret għall-futur)
Independence Day Speech (4th of July): “We can’t be consumed by our petty differences any more” (or don’t you think that Joseph Muscat would look good in a bomber jacket?)
I don’t really know you. I’ve never met you and I cannot even claim to have heard any of your radio programmes that shot you to notoriety and turned you into a household name synonymous with political mud-slinging in the days of Alfred Sant. I might have criticised your brother for his lack of political sense and his hopeless career as the 6th seat that never was and I will probably do so again since such criticism falls well within the rules of the game.
The fact that I do not really know you does not mean that I am not obliged to deal with you in the manner that any respectable citizen deserves to be treated by a columnist and blogger. However, I believe that I still owe you an apology.
I owe you an apology for having compared you to Daphne Caruana Galizia. True, Daphne is no foreigner to mud-slinging and engages daily in the “guilt by association” tactic that has been perfected to a tee by our wonderful political class. But you see, Manuel, you were not half as sophisticated in your tirades in your time. You might have tried to repeat lies to no end in the hope that the gushing followers of your rants would take your word as the gospel truth.
In fact, forgive me if I say that the similarity she bears with your style in this case is uncanny. The thing is that in your case you might have sold lies. You were just an evangelist, a propaganda peddler, eager to drum your gospel into your unquestioning flock’s psyche. Daphne goes one better. She denigrates by implication, and moves on to unhesitatingly savage even people who are remotely affiliated or connected to any of her pet hates. You might have seen your enemy as one big anonymous blue blob. But your rallying cry is nothing compared to her Facebook forays and ISP indictments. It’s all about taking a half- truth, a sweeping assumption, another desperate pigeonhole, and creatively moulding a hundred links by spurious association.
There comes a time when there need be no factual lien between her targets. Take the manner in which time and again Daphne has peddled the idea that J’accuse is somehow involved in some pro-Labour or pro-AD conspiracy. Our name is dropped in the middle of a rant against a fellow columnist simply based on the hopeless claim that J’accuse is somehow fixated on being anti-PN. I’m sorry, Manuel, but your “the enemy of my enemy” line has been worn out of all recognition. Daphne is desperate to slam the Labour/AD label on this blog without once engaging on the matters which this blog has raised time and time again. Take the “Why now?” issue…. it’s too complicated to answer, is it? Better apply some of the good old mud-slinging tactic and throw in some non-sensical statements like “remote controlled blog” (What is a remote controlled blog anyway, Manuel? Can you tell me?)
By the way, Manuel, in case you mistakenly believe that there might be more for me to apologise about : I’m not the one who compared you to Lou Bondì. You must admit that if it is style and method that we are talking about, the description fits like a tailor-made glove. However, Manuel, I did not come up with that comparison myself and I always give credit where credit is due. Lou’s another one who seems to have been perfecting your style for some time. Don’t worry, he rarely takes criticism head on so he’s bound to claim never to have read anything about this comparison. He doesn’t need to anyway, there’s always Daphne to do the business for him. You know… a sneaky message and a call here… a mud-slinging blog post there…. There must be lots of back scratching going on.
So there Manuel. I’m sorry. I’m sorry to have compared you to the masters of modern day mud-slinging and grudge-bearing slurs. You were just the primitive precursor of this new politics. Your legacy however seems to be guaranteed a dark and slimy future whether or not you return to grace the radio-waves (please don’t).
So, Manuel, if you did find my comparing you to Daphne Caruana Galizia to be in any way jarring or insulting, then I take it back. In any case… she’s much better than you in doing what you used to do… but I guess you knew that already.
(Il-logħba ħażina). So Gaddafi is not in Niger after all. He has called a Syrian TV-channel (yes, those channels currently denying the existence of mass killings in Syria by pro-Syria leader forces) and told them that “Nah, nah, nah, it’s not true. I am not in Niger. I am in Libya and will fight till the end. My bijbil dej luv me.” Or something like that.
It’s back to hide and seek tactics again. We saw it with Hussein and we saw it with Bin Laden. Now it’s Gaddafi’s turn to find a hole to hide and wait for the various forces to uncover him. And whenever the call is made that he has been found, he has every right to claim that “The game is wrong” – a bad translation of our hide and seek days of youth. It meant that some foul had been committed and that the game had to start again…
So here we go. Face against the wall and counting the dead until the Crazy Colonel is found.
The Plategate saga is in the news again thanks to the testimony given in court by the accused. Here’s some J’accuse pointers that could have very well been gathered over the various posts in which we chronicled the event and questioned its motives through the past 18 months. If you are interested (really?) in previous posts then just search “Plategate” in the J’accuse search box. You risk being pleasantly entertained.
WARNING TO RUNS ENTHUSIASTS – the material in this and related posts risks damaging your brain. Proceed only under adult supervision. Yes, we have a well-groomed high horse this morning.
So here are the questions we have been asking and which we would like you to ask yourselves.
1. The court case is a defamation case. Not so surprisingly, all the grand discoveries relating to improper behaviour by a public persona were not brought to the attention of the appropriate forum. Does the Maltese legal, political and administrative system have an appropriate forum? Where does one go to with an allegation or proof of improper behaviour by a public person?
(difficulty level : Breeze)
2. The accused in the defamation case used a blog – a public means of communication – to transmit information relating to a particular person’s behaviour implying that this behaviour was unbecoming and inappropriate. This action is commendable and wins full support of J’accuse insofar as it fulfils the fourth estate’s duty of monitoring and revealing the behaviour of the other estates in order to render their operation transparent and in order to give full effect to the fourth estate’s role as a check and balance. This is a strong power of the fourth estate and should be wielded with responsibility if it is to be effective.
Do you think that in this case the Runs acted responsibly in order to fulfil the duty of the fourth estate?
3. The Crucial “Why Now?” issue. There’s no prizes guessing why a defamation case ended up being the best route of defence for the alleged victim. Defamation focuses the attention on the derogatory, cheap and sleazy language that was opted for by the blog when exposing the improper behaviour. A factual allegation such as “drugs were available at parties” differs greatly from the statement “your backside is the size of a bus”. Worse still for the accused, the motivation for bringing out the information is brought further into question by the manner in which such information was presented as well as by the timing. Here is the statement by the accused giving testimony giving reasons for her timing:
Mrs Caruana Galizia said she started writing about Magistrate Scerri Herrera because the situation had become ‘completely out of hand’. She had not written anything before because she had had pending cases before the Magistrate.
From an objective point of view journalists would do well to follow up on Caruana Galizia’s steps and monitor the behaviour of public persons – bringing them to light as soon as they have sufficient evidence. And ASKING PERTINENT QUESTIONS…
The ethics of journalism require that the wielding of this power is exercised with due diligence. That diligence includes not sitting on information for as long as convenient – only to unleash it as a weapon of hatred or spite.
Beyond Plategate the measure that could be learnt from this case is that keeping information for its (un)timely use i.e. when it hurts most is just as ethically irresponsible and dangerous as having a magistrate publicly act below the standards expected of her office.
Doing so – using information as a blackmail or bargain in some twisted ill-conceived power struggle – could deal a lethal blow to the waning confidence that the public has on journalistic integrity in this country.
Julia Farrugia’s “rapping” at the hands of the Press Ethics Commission (PEC) has brought the question of journalistic ethics back to the discussion arena. J’accuse has long taken the subject of journalistic ethics to heart – particularly within the context of the growth of the role of blogs and blog content in the public sphere. For some time now we have been mourning the death of investigative journalism in Malta and it has little to do with who is carrying the scythe.
In true fishpond fashion, the post-mortem analysis of the Julia Farrugia/Joseph Mizzi has been absorbed into the mainstream manner of journalism: where beyond the news item lies an opportunity to snipe at people and milk the possibility to sling mud as far as possible. This analysis of ours has nothing to do with our being faint-hearted or timid about the need to call a spade a spade. J’accuse has no claims to purity or perfection (though we do get damn close).
What we would like to see discussed is whether Julia Farrugia failed on the count of exercising journalistic discretion when faced with a possible story. In the case of that kind of examination we find that our judgement falls closer to that found on Lou Bondi’s or Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blogs than on the explanation afforded by MaltaToday journalist Matthew Vella. At the moment of receiving the information and video, Farrugia was duty bound to apply an ethical brake to the eagerness to publish a juicy video.
Matthew Vella tries to find fault with the PEC’s reasoning. In particular Vella does not agree with what he reads as a shift of moral responsibility: “it was not incumbent upon the journalist to take moral umbrage at the source’s footage. That would have been tantamount to self-censorship, on the basis of the assumed deference towards government appointees.” We may grant that the standard being applied by the PEC may not find universal acceptance (or cause difficulties in future application) – but that would be focusing on a separate problem. The focus here was on a journalist’s judgement and ethical considerations when evaluating “news value”.
Vella asks: “So does this mean from now on, when we encounter some form of embarrassing or unbecoming behaviour by a government minister or high-ranking civil servant, they should not be held to account, simply because they ridicule themselves?” I don’t think anybody would agree that this is the conclusion to be drawn. Let’s put it this way, had Julia Farrugia’s news item limited itself to reporting the fact that Mr Mizzi was filmed in a groggy state we might not be here asking questions. Instead the implications loaded behind the video, its suspect editing and the forcefulness with which it was used to bring about a political statement and result, shift it away from plain reporting and into the hazy domain of journalism driven by preconceived agendas – in which case it stops being journalism. It becomes biased reporting where “facts” are cut and paste to suit a journalist’s agenda.
Which brings me to the Daphnes and the Lous of this world. Lou Bondi has recntly taken to blogging and no longer considers the blogging world as a world of “peċluqa” (see video below) – either that or he has become one hell of a “peċluq” himself. His last two posts at the time of writing (“Julia, try a red bathing suit this time” and “When Julia went crying to daddy“) are redolent of the style perfected on the Runs (there goes the obsession). Malta’s foremost investigative journalist does not limit himself to discussing the ethical issue at stake but performs his own little foray into the world of character assassinations and guilt by association.
Daphne too chooses to deviate from the real issue and peppers her commentary with references to “il-boton” – the usual snide, taste-based, zokk u fergħa reasoning best left for PLPN bull towards the election. This is a pity really because there is no doubt that Caruana Galizia has accumulated enough expertise and networking to have the right sources and means to fill the gap that exists in investigative journalism in Malta. Instead she participates happily in fishpond peċlieq with gay abandon.
Yes, we know we can expect the tirade on J’accuse from this magnificent duo of Maltese journalistic standards but hey what’s new? Plategate may long be buried in the collective memory and might be down to the final stanzas of what has been a drawn out lament but the lessons to be learnt are still there in full view of anyone who cares to listen. Last time round – back in the heyday of Plategate – we held Lou to task for his apparent inability to assemble a proper program investigating the causes behind Plategate and the conflagration that ensued. Like Julia Farrugia, Daphne had sat on some juicy and important bits of news regarding the behaviour of members of our judiciary and their extended circles. Like Julia she had a decision on whether to go public or not. That was her moment of applying journalistic ethics.
Lou failed to ask Daphne (his dinner friend) the vital question: Why now? (as in Why then?). Julia Farrugia deserves the rapping on the knuckles for her lack of judgement in the Mizzi Affair. Daphne Caruana Galizia would still have us believe that the flush of information regarding the private lives of public individuals was triggered off by a sudden urge of public duty notwithstanding the fact that she had sat on that information (and accumulated it in true peċluqa style) for quite some time. Why did she choose the moment she chose to suddenly publish the information? Lou tried his damn best to depict Daphne as the hero and martyr when making his editorial choices for the infamous Bondiplus programme.
In J’accuse’s book the press should be reporting instances of public individuals who are caught misbehaving while on public duty. It should be uncovering these situations of public officers behaving badly and should continue to press on to ensure the transparency of such information.
What should never be done is to use such information in line with a private agenda of spite, hate, jealousy and retribution. Unfortunately it seems that Malta’s fishpond journalism is more and more prone to pick up the latter style than engage in real investigation and reporting.
So much for ethics then. Take that from Malta’s longest running peċluq.
