Facts, first and foremost

The Tumas Fenech Foundation for Education in Journalism, of which Emeritus President Dr Ugo Mifsud Bonnici is the President and I am a member, has organised many activities in its almost 10 years of existence. They were all relevant to its mission, which is unrelated to the business world.

The Tumas Group meets the foundation's financing requirements to carry out its activities. They do not cost much to organise since they are carried out by volunteers. The group stays at long arm's length and never interferes with, or seeks to influence the decisions of the trustees.

None of the foundation's events were more relevant to journalism as a key pillar of the democratic process than the two wherein it invited first the Prime Minister then the leader of the Opposition to give their views about the relationship between politicians and journalists.

Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi, who spoke several weeks ago, gave an excellent speech. Opposition leader Joseph Muscat, invited by the foundation to speak last Thursday, countered with a very good speech of his own.

Both speeches analysed the vibrant relevance of journalism in a democracy which functions well and is determined to stay healthy. Freedom of speech and a strong journalistic body are essential to that health. The subject was studied in depth by Carmen Sammut, a university lecturer, in her doctoral thesis, published as a book which deserves wide attention (Media in Maltese Society).

The media in Malta are very largely of the committed type. The two major parties have strong daily and Sunday newspapers, and radio and television stations. Untied though very often politically committed journalism has a restricted space to manoeuvre in. Yet it does so with considerable significance.

The three untied stables (Allied Newspapers, the Independent group and the MaltaToday set-up) plough their own furrow. They have their agendas, obviously, for no one navigates without a political map these days. But it is not an agenda cast in stone, like those of the media of the political parties.

The quasi-independent sectors of the media give ample space to contributors (through the letter columns) and opinion makers (through individual columns), irrespective of their political bias. I have been testimony to that in The Times and The Sunday Times for many years, under various editors all of whom carried my views totally uncensored.

It is a free spectrum, but overall not ideal. The party media are far too partisan. They even ignore the principle that to penetrate with their own objective they have to be balanced in their news, though obviously subjective in their editorials. The Public Broadcasting Service too still leaves much to be desired. The doctors Gonzi and Muscat in their own way proposed means to bring about less partisan political media. More work needs to be done in that regard and I hope that the Tumas Foundation will contribute further to it.

Meanwhile, the activities I referred to have unfortunately confirmed the extent to which the partisan class seems unable to be objective. In his address the Labour leader, which coincided with the 30th anniversary of Black Monday, when Labour thugs burnt down The Times building and went on to ransack the Nationalist opposition leader's house, implicitly condemned what took place.

Astonishingly, the Nationalist Party twisted his words. In a statement it accused the Labour leader of distorting the facts relating to the events that took place on Black Monday. It claimed that Dr Muscat chose to blame the PN by giving the impression that those guilty of violence were just using Labour as a vehicle for their violence... "The truth is it was Labour supporters who perpetrated physical, emotional and psychological violence. Dr Muscat was trying to give the impression of an apology when in truth he was shifting the blame onto Nationalist supporters to appease hardcore Labour supporters." (The Times, October 17)

Yes, it must have been Labour thugs who made the 1979 Black Monday attacks. But, no, Dr Muscat did not try to pin the blame on the Nationalist side. Political spin and falsehood have to stop, from both sides, and journalists should try to contribute towards that happening. That's what a free press is all about: facts, first and foremost.