As the tragedy unfolds

I’m writing this sitting on the sofa where Nicky Gera slept not many years ago. He was a friend of my son’s. They were in the same class and I remember him as a cheerful, friendly teenager. The last time I met him, he was waiting tables at Shivas and he was no different to when he used to come to our home, slightly less jokey, truth be told, as he was at work.

These were private people and their deaths... are of genuine concern to no one except their bereaved...- I.M. Beck

Why this young boy – in my mind, he remains a boy, I suppose the same way my own son remains one, however old he gets – met his horrifying death on New Year’s Day and why he was involved in the equally horrifying death of a young father of twins remains, as I write, a tragic mystery.

I don’t think I ever met Duncan Zammit, though he seems to have been as much an unlikely participant in a tragedy like this as Nicky Gera.

As the days after the tragedy unfolded, we started getting dribbles, and sometimes more than that, of information, especially when the immediate family members were given space by the media.

Even with this information, freely given (we’re lucky, frankly, that we don’t have a media culture where people have money waved in front of them for their stories) we’re not really much the wiser as to what happened and why, though this hasn’t stopped the speculation.

Human nature being what it is, speculation and discussion about something like this is only to be expected and I confess to indulging in it myself. However, all that we do know, to be perfectly honest, is the sum total of nothing more than the supremely sad fact that two young men have died in violent circumstances.

One has to ask, at this point: Do we have the right to know anything more or, for that matter, to say anything that isn’t an expression of solidarity with the people left behind, the ones who have to live their lives in the shadow of this horror?

I think not.

This does not mean that I, like everyone else, will not remain curious and, being only human, try to satisfy that curiosity but when you come down to it, where’s the public interest in establishing what really happened? Except if someone else was involved in the assault and remains free or if someone’s reputation is being tarnished, for instance, the public has no inherent right to know what happened. These were private people and their deaths, while being tragic, are of genuine concern to no one except their bereaved, who, in their turn, deserve our support.

The rest of us should really keep our noses out of it.

Anyone who knows my style will have seen the way this is heading: to an outright condemnation of the way some people have conducted themselves in the media.

I’m used to the “comments” section of the online papers being populated by sad specimens who understand only what they choose to and whose motives are uber-clear but they’re only attacking me and my ideas, such as they are, ideas which I choose to make public and, therefore, I have no right to grumble.

But these are not comments made in reaction to anything like that. These are comments that are spiteful, ill-informed and moronic. They are comments that are smugly narcissistic because, clearly, the people who make them think they know it all and have the right to judge the world.

Above all, they are comments that betray an attitude on the part of the people who make them that is seriously scary because they obviously vomit what they like when they like without a thought about the effect of the rubbish they’re spouting. That the media let some of the comments see the light of day is bad enough but when sections of the media indulge in similar antics, then we have a problem in this country and no mistake.

This is not the time or place to point fingers but it will come as no surprise to anyone who knows Malta’s media scene that the media houses that are guilty of rumour-mongering and snide innuendo are the ones that adopt this style as a matter of course. They know who they are and you know who they are. If you are in any doubt, look back over my columns and blogs.

It is not only the mainstream media, online and not, that has its problems, of course. On balance, I think the problems are greater on the mainstream side but only because we haven’t taken Facebook and Twitter completely on board yet.

For this we should give thanks, because the vilest, most despicable comment on the case was published by someone calling himself Deo Catania.

I have a screen shot of the comment, and of much of the same, and worse, on his FB page.

imbocca@gmail.com

www.timesofmalta.com/articles/author/20