Last Friday the case of 10-year-old Ella Bridge who for two whole years had been in the midst of a jurisdiction and custody battle between her parents, finally ended.
Though the AG will be appealing the decision, on Friday the presiding Judge decided in Ella’s favour, allowing her to stay in Malta and not to be sent back to the UK to her biological mother.
Obviously referring to the media hype that was created thanks to a Facebook page which to date has over 15,000 members, Mr Justice Azzopardi warned lawyer Aron Mifsud Bonnici about using the press to put pressure on the adjudicator.
Mr Justic Azzopardi said, “it is not the newspapers that decide cases”, and then went on to add that doing so might get the opposite result he wanted.
I don’t know about you, but I found this hugely contradictory.
Logically, if it is not the newspapers that decide cases, then they shouldn’t have a decisive effect either way, not in favour and neither against.
If a media campaign could result in the opposite result that the campaigners want, then it is still the media that decided the case isn’t it?
Love it or hate it, there are various reasons why the media is considered to be the 4th pillar of democracy.
The main reason is that a truly free media keeps tabs on the Legislature, the Government and the Judiciary, which, just for the record, are the other three pillars of democracy.
The second reason is that by reporting and giving a voice to public opinion the media also helps legislatures, policy makers and decision makers to keep at least one finger on the pulse of society, in other words, it helps them get off their high horse and live the real life at least a little.
And last but not least, the media is fundamental to a true democracy because possession of the correct information is key to anything under the sun. Be it politics, be it business, be it romance, be it a court case, be it whatever, wherever and whenever - anything you do, anything you say, only becomes possible (and easier) with the right information in hand.
So what happens when you have distorted information coming out of most media pie holes?
What happens when you have half truths and PR spins being shoved down journalists’ throats, and inexperienced reporters reporting them as though they were the Gospel’s truth?
What happens when stuff is taken out of context subliminally enough for hidden agendas not to be detected?
What happens when you have hoards of people listening to just one political party’s media, which preaches to the converted and which only says what its audience want to hear?
Before the advent of social media I would have said that the answer to all the above questions would have been ‘DISASTER.’ We would have had a society voting blindly because their information would have been based on wrong or incomplete information, but now, things are changing.
I think that now, and more so in the near future, the fourth pillar of democracy is not the media anymore but your Facebooks, your Twitters, and your YouTubes. These social media channels have given each and every one of us a big free loud speaker making it possible not only to speak our minds, but to have a mass audience to interact with.
Of course you have to filter through a lot of rubbish, personal attacks, detailed information about bowel movements, and the latest romantic update, but at the end of the day, the sheer amount of commentary, observations and information, that pours in through social networks makes them the best random bite of reality.
Let’s face it, before the advent of social media, most of us would have depended entirely on the ‘controlled’ media and their particular spins in order to know what was happening in the next town or village, let alone in other countries, in our law courts, behind our politician’s closed doors, and their much coveted houses….but not anymore.
It’s social media that gets you the closest picture of reality because despite most comments being silly and frivolous, most of them have some basis of truth. You get objective observations, subjective deductions, ridiculous assumptions and the odd crack head too, but whether you like it or not this is the reality you live in.
The best thing about it is that the views will remain alive long after the news is dead, and no media strategist, no PR spinner, no whip, not even the Prime Minister, or Labour’s big heads can tweak with the comments one bit.
Of course you’ll get elves infiltrating the system, fake profiles mushrooming everywhere, but at the end of the day this medium will change society’s social fabric and feed our need for the right information...and so be it!