Scare quotes

Sometimes, you really have to wonder whether the people who ‘make up’ the local media actually think before they open their mouths. I am not alluding to disc jockeys who take the Mickey out of people calling them from rest homes.

My guess is that the majority of people in the media have, at one time or another, received anonymous letters, or, these days, e-mails. Some of these purport to give information, others are full of insults. There are other types of missives that I shall not describe here.

The presenter of Ma’ Natalie (Radju Malta) actually went on air, last Wednesday, saying she had received an unsigned letter. She went on to explain that people do not, as a general rule, like getting them, but since this was a “nice” one, she would quote from it – and promptly did.

An unsigned letter does not deserve attention, let alone mention on air. This gives the person who writes it the ‘power’ of knowing that despite not having the guts to show his name, he has been accorded acknowledgement.

Another incident which, so far, is being considered as the work of ‘unknowns’, was the peculiar case in which Joseph Mizzi, ex-chairman of the state broadcaster PBS, was set up for ridicule (actually it’s just ‘set up’) by having clips of him chucked on to Youtube and other social sites practically minutes after the incident was filmed.

Haste, of course, breeds waste – and some precious seconds of this footage had to be ‘wasted’ and pulled, because they featured soundbites that could have identified the perpetrators; but let us not digress.

The incident was recently give a new lease of life because Illum editor Julia Farrugia penned an incisive letter to Kevin Dingli, chair of the Ethics Board of the Istitut tal-Ġurnalisti Maltin, calling for the hearing on the complaint by former PBS chairman Joe Mizzi be pronounced void and compromised, since according to her there is a conflict of interest within the board itself.

Many people would know that this alleged conflict of interest is personified in none other than Claire Bonello, a columnist for this newspaper. Readers of Bonello’s columns will find that, behind her wry humour, is a fair, sharp mind. Like me, she is not acquainted with Mizzi, so nobody can accuse her of having an agenda.

But how can Bonello’s vote and opinions be disregarded now, seeing that the hearing is history? Her part in the proceedings cannot be highlighted and deleted, as if they never occurred. It is illogical to expect Bonello to sit on the fence at this stage of the proceedings.

Anyway, her comments on a social site are only a couple of inches long; a distillation of what other columnists, including myself, have written since the disgusting footage emerged. Ah! But then we have never been in the hair-trigger sights of Illum or Malta Today.

Alas, nothing, so far, has reached the public about what has been done with regard to the Mizzi debacle. As soon as the story broke, I was already asking whether the voice patterns of all the Maltese who had been to the Eurovision afterparty had been taken, to be checked against those that were (mistakenly, in the euphoria of having such ‘hot’ news to break) included in the first version, later edited, of the clip.

If something had been done about this, we would surely have heard about it betwixt the platitudes that are littering the ether.

Farrugia says she has no qualms (“no issue”, she says) about having launched the clips; the intimation being that public personalities are sitting ducks for paparazzi whether they (the former) are attending church services, or whether they are politicians who, like Gary Hart mistakenly did, issue casual challenges like “Follow me – it will be boring!”, and anything in between.

Yet, I find it very weird that Farrugia is only now heaping coals upon Bonello’s head. There was ample time to voice concern about, and lodge complaints over, a conflict of interest allegedly illustrated in statements made, and admitted to be known to be made, by the complainant – a good two months before any review hearings even started.

We all know how Miley Cyrus had those photos taken, and then when she gauged the ebbing tide of public opinion, apologised to her fanbase. We all know how Rebekah Brooks donated a mobile telephone to Sarah Payne’s mother, and how this phone was subsequently hacked into by News of the World lackey Glen Mulcaire.

In this particular case, for anyone to delay voicing such concerns clearly indicates a desire to monitor probable results in public and other opinion. It could be the case that it was deemed necessary to keep options open, with an eye towards having a card up the sleeve with which to tilt the balance of the game.

Farrugia has gone on record as saying that Bonello ought to “have had the decency to announce her conflict of interest and withdraw from the commission, as another member who had connections with PBS had done”. No mention at all by name was made of Carmen Sammut, a columnist for Malta Today and incidentally a member of the Press Ethics Commission as well.

Whereas a search engine primed with the right words will turn up a page of Malta Today ; the article indicated is nowhere to be seen on it – that is, not unless one has the full address for it. People forget that the internet is not Las Vegas.

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