Mediawatch

The Times Blog

We may be working on slow mode thanks to the big move out of Lux City but that does not mean we have no time to note the big changes* in the Maltese Net World. The Times has chosen to wait for 11 days after the 1st of April to launch its spanking new online look. Thank the man in the sky for that otherwise we’d have suspected this was somebody trying to pull off another of those sophisticated pranks.

So here’s the new Times website lads… nothing more than a standard blog set up for 2011. Is that all they can do? Really? With all the resources at hand? I wonder who’s getting paid for this odd job… some lazy mutt with not much to think of beyond filching off standard templates that can be found on the net at the modicum price (prezz modiku) of 75$ (and that’s when you REALLY want to spend).

One of the greatest drawbacks of the new format will be that the ugly mutts of Bocca & Co will permanently feature at the bottom of the page like some eerie footnote.

Welcome to the Times 2011. It’s like J’accuse 2009… but darker….

*cheers to SL for the tip off.

Postal Voting

Here’s how modern democracies work. We got this notice in the work mail. It was addressed to all persons of Spanish nationality. You can open the link and even with a rudimentary level of Spanish you will soon understand what is going on. Yes. That’s right. They’ve got elections coming up so they are being asked to register so as to be able to vote by post. Simples no?

Click here to read the document.

Freedom Xejn

A happy freedom day holiday to y’all on the island. Why the photo you ask? Well no disrespect and all but this geezer is everything and all about Freedom Day in 2011. He was there on the original freedom day when Malta celebrated the non-renewal of a contract by its wise and sage leader. He stood behind and smiled as il-perit climbed what must be Malta’s ugliest monument ever and lit the torch of freedom.

He probably was smiling at home in Tripoli or some other Libyan palace when a few years later il-perit would bargain a constitutional PLPN entente of reform – adjusting parliamentary representation in exchange for the neutrality clause.

He must have smiled again when il-perit’s Malta kow-towed to most of his wishes in all forms of subservient arse-licking including most importantly the early warning system for any menaces from the north by Mintoff’s follower (sic – successor).

He smiled again when the government of Work, Justice and Freedom (act II) shot into power and quickly reassured him that “if we want everything to change, then everything must be the same“.

God knows if he was smiling yesterday from afar as the progressive, modernist leader and purveyor of European values told the assembled crowd of nostalgics that “we won’t take sides”.

Freedom? What freedom?

Chained by PLPN yellow politics? That’s Freedom xejn. (no freedom).

I.M. Jack – the déménagement issue

Boxes are being packed and labeled. Furniture is being sold at bargain prices and frantic contacts are being made with various moving companies as D-day approaches. J’accuse is moving base and leaving the city. Come May we will be castellans in the village of Dondelange and you can expect more of the current hiccuped manner of posting on the blog. Meanwhile here are a few things I’ve been meaning to post about and had no time to.

1. Rules of referendum

Our pet storyline is making the headlines. Raphael Vassallo explains the implications of the PLPN drafted rules on the next refered. In the article “Divorce: Law assumes referendum will be held along party lines” Raphael points out the rules of the game and how they seem to be written almost exclusively with two parties in mind. Well there you have it. Further proof that the PLPN Dumbing Down theory is not simply a theory. We now have a ridiculous situation where a party that has no position on divorce (PL) and another that has a position but will not do anything about it lest it loses precious votes (PN) are the only two who can participate in the administrative aspect of the referendum. No amount of public formations f Pro- and Con- entities will change the law. Funny? Not really. This is what we mean when we say that electoral rules are written solely with the intention of preserving and reinforcing the bipartisan status quo.

 

2. Flights of Fancy

In the same vein let it be registered that J’accuse’s position on the expat vote in the referendum is consistent with previous positions. We firmly believe that in the 21st century expats should be given the opportunity to vote either by overseas ballot or via post – especially when it comes to a vote in a consultative referendum. J’accuse never agreed with the PLPN farce of sponsored flights – and still does not agree with the principle. We doubt whether any sponsored tax-free flights will be offered in this hour of Air Malta need (although they would actually serve as a hidden form of subsidy for the airline) but should they be offered we will use them until the day the possibility of voting from abroad is offered.

3. Referendum and Church Points

The campaign proceeds with inputs from all sides. The consultative referendum is turning into making a point and just that. So yes, vote if you have to and vote in favour of the introduction of divorce. It will be sad to see Joseph Muscat and Labour acting as though they carried the vote themselves – they did not and they are not helping. Worse still those idiots and nincompoops writing away on facebook as though Labour is facing a new interdiction better wake up and smell the coffee – their party is just as cowardly yellow as most of the no to divorce factoid inventing freaks. If ever divorce is introduced in Malta it will be DESPITE LABOUR, DESPITE PN and DESPITE CATHOLIC proselytisation.

4. Giletti… the worst that RAI can get

The Maltese world is in uproar because a third rate “journalist” on RAI TV dared allege that the Maltese shoot on immigrants and that is why they choose Lampedusa. I tend to see the reaction as overblown and for a while I would also go far as to say that an Ambassador phoning in to correct would be a step too far. Then I think of the Mexican Ambassador officially complaining to the BBC “over “offensive, xenophobic and humiliating” comments made about his country on Top Gear.” It’s not a matter of colonial mentality as other “journalists” might put it. I do believe that an official protest is in place – it’s the rabid reaction by the internet posse that really was over the top. The colonial mentality – or rather the PLPN educated reaction is one of violent tirades of personal retribution on anything that smacks of RAI and Giletti. In a nation of people brought up and stunned into an aggressive-other mentality there was little more to be expected. The reaction, though originally justified, tends to obviate any response after a while. And anyway… does Giletti know that our army are too busy daring each other to chew on poisonous beetles?

5. Libya

It’s not that I wanted to relegate the topic but as the UN sanctioned intervention continues there are a number of pressing questions that cannot be ignored. As I read today of the developments in Sirte I couldn’t help but notice that we have moved very, very far from the protection of civilians. At which point did the advance of the rebels become covered by the UN sanctions? I have no shadow of doubt that (a) Ghaddafi has to go and (b) that the dawn of a new, free Libya is ultimately desirable. What I do worry about is the legal somersaults that will be required to differentiate any intervention that is occuring henceforth from the need to intervene in other nations such as Syria, Yemen, Bahrain and who knows…. China. It’s not a war – there is no casus belli. It’s not a UN Sanctioned rebellion (they made pretty sure of that). Then why are missiles thundering over Sirte and getting closer to Tripoli?

Orwell's Newspeak

Here’s an extract from an essay by George Orwell that appeared in Horizon in the April 1946 edition. The essay entitled “Politics and English Language” may be found in its entirety on this page. Now to the extract:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called PACIFICATION. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called TRANSFER OF POPULATION or RECTIFICATION OF FRONTIERS. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called ELIMINATION OF UNRELIABLE ELEMENTS. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so.” Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

While freely conceding that the Soviet régime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

The inflated style is itself a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outlines and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were instinctively, to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink. In our age there is no such thing as “keeping out of politics.” All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer. I should expect to find — this is a guess which I have not sufficient knowledge to verify — that the German, Russian and Italian languages have all deteriorated in the last ten or fifteen years as a result of dictatorship.

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J'accuse Shortlisted for Journalism Award

You may have read by now that the J’accuse column on the Malta Independent on Sunday has been shortlisted for the “Opinion Article” section of the Malta Journalism Awards organised by the Institute of Maltese Journalists.  J’accuse has often been critical of the awards themselves – especially since we could never fathom a system that requires in which you nominate yourself for the prize.

Nothing has changed since then and we do believe that one reason the nominations are not “altruistic” so to speak is the fish-pondism that curiously (and understandably) is part of journalistic culture in Malta. It’s not like we’re falling over ourselves to say how good “the others” are is it? Anyways – so why are J’accuse’s articles on the nominations list and how did they end up being shortlisted?

We have Alex Vella Gera to thank (he does not know yet). Around the time the nominations were opened AVG was supposed to get a literary prize of sorts. Alex refused to pick up the prize in protest at the obscenity case that was still open at the time – if I get this right, Alex would not receive a prize from a government that still tolerated such laws. I am sure Alex will correct me if I am wrong – he did and here is his full explanation:

I didn’t attend the awards ceremony for this reason alone: because it was held under the auspices of the prime minister, leader of the political party which runs NET TV, and which accused me and Mark Camilleri of paedophaelia (a pretty serious accusation, especially when unfounded, in this day and age). My not attending was not a non-acceptance of the prize (I need the money badly) and neither a protest against being hauled to court. I bear no grudges about that. I hope that’s clear now, although I suspect I’ll be called to correct misconceptions and inaccuracies once again soon enough. – AVG

Some people, commenting on the AVG business, said it was ironic that he was being awarded a prize when his work was being “censored” by the police and when he was actually still an accused in court. Sweet. Only Alex was not awarded the prize for “Li Tkisser Sewwi” so it was a little less ironic.

Back to us. We liked the idea of prizes for misfits. So we nominated three articles from J’accuse. The articles in question all deal with the state of journalism in Malta – something that J’accuse has taken much to heart believe or not. We did not really think we’d get very far to be honest so Kudos for the shortlisting. As an addendum we would like to add that we would have liked to nominate some blog posts for the category of e-journalism but our questions regarding the procedure for an electronic (unsigned) application remained unanswered.
Here are the shortlisted articles:

1. The Day Journalism Died (28th February 2010)

In which it is argued that Malta’s foremost programme (winner of the Best Current Affairs Programme in the Malta TV Awards) that boasts that it sets standards in investigative journalism has abdicated its responsibility. The article questions whether the ethical standards that should be upheld by investigative journalists have not been lost using the Bondi+ programme about blogging as an example.

2. A Nation Divorced from Reality (11th July 2010)

In which both censorship and divorce are examined in the light of current developments and attitudes and in which J’accuse returns to the running theme that no matter what the medium for discussion is or what the current theme is, the Maltese have difficulties reconciling themselves with the image in the mirror.

3. The Power and the Glory (28th November 2010)

In which the relationship between power and exposure/popularity is examined. J’accuse analyses the concept of “fish-pondism” or the refusal to acknowledge other sources/opinion within the journalistic/opinion column community. Is Maltese media prepared to engage with the New Media or will “fish-pondism” prevail?

It’s not really about “winning” the prize – we’d actually be surprised if we got much further than this (incidentally congrats and good luck to fellow shortlisted entries Claire Bonello and Kristina Chetcuti). It’s more about making the point in the community that should be listening.

Incidentally the Maltese blogging community is getting a shake up (and is very much alive and kicking) over on facebook thanks to Davinia Hamilton’s new page. Here’s to hoping that a new phase of cross-referencing discussion will open: still trying to find a way to create a common blogroll for Maltese blogs.

 

 

 

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