Is it true that soon Malta will be hit by a shower not of hail (we have now been accustomed to that) but of missiles fired by Isis?
It does not seem likely, and in fact, Isis, in the notorious and shabbily written document titled ‘The Islamic State 2015’, had never promised such a nefarious bonanza anytime in the near future, if at all. But this is what many people concluded after reading the titles of reports in some local media outlets quoting Italian news websites.
Most people do not analyse newspaper reports in detail. Many are generally attracted by the heading and then scan the report, reaching a conclusion reflecting more the title and other considerations than what is actually written. Some of the considerations that guide this process of selective scanning include the general framing that the media has been giving to a subject for a period of time and the climate/ context surrounding the publication of the particular story.
Context is very important. It partly explains, for example, why the 1938 innovative radio dramatisation of H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds caused widespread panic in the United States – though the media hyped it more than it really merited – who believed that Martians were really invading the world.
Though there was no similar reaction in Malta at the report of the threat of an Isis missile shower there were many people who were frightened out of their skin. Facebook was alight with scaremongering and apocalyptic doom.
The Isis threat seemed to be more realistic as it was combined with a false report claiming that war planes on their way to attack Isis were to be fuelled in Malta. Besides, that was the week when the Corinthia hotel in Tripoli was attacked, a Japanese hostage was killed by Isis and a sick video of the burning alive of a Jordanian pilot was released.
The concentration of these tragic events followed months of media reporting framing Isis as barbaric beasts – a description that fits them like a glove. Therefore the report that they would hit Malta with missiles gains credibility when read within the context created by these events.
One could argue that since the news reports in the Maltese media were peppered with disclaimers there should have been no panic. But so was the radio broadcast of War of the Worlds back in 1938. Journalists and producers sometimes forget that the process of selective reading and listening within the context and the framing I just outlined will induce readers to ignore the disclaimers and just swallow the sensationalist bits.
It was reported, for example, that Isis would take their time before matching their words with action. Before firing missiles against Spain, Sicily and Malta they first of all have to vanquish ‘the Persians’ (i.e. Iran) and then the ‘tyrants of the Islamic Maghreb’. We were also told by experts that the missiles mentioned in the report have very limited range and would probably not cause the havoc promised.
The government has no option but to come clean in this Facebook generation
The conquests mentioned would not happen tomorrow, if they will ever happen. If immediacy is at the heart of the concept of news value why was a story devoid of such a characteristic deemed to have news value by some of the local media and by very limited Italian media? The big media refused to bite the bait.
I do not think that the fact that a report is circulated or a newspaper has a piece of information is always a sufficiently good enough reason to publish it.
CNN wrestled with such a dilemma on a number of occasions in Iraq. For example, during an interview with CNN, Uday, the eldest son of Saddam Hussein, boasted of his intention to assassinate two of his brothers-in-law who had defected, and also the King Hussein of Jordan. CNN was certain that if they had published the story, Saddam would have killed the Iraqi translator. They decided not to publish the story but warned the King of Jordan.
In our case there was no question about saving lives but there was a question of creating panic unnecessarily and of being manipulated by the terrorists. It is well known that all terrorists try to use the media to further their aims. This is what Bader-Meinhoff and the Brigate Rosse did back in the 1970s and 1980s with a good measure of success. But Isis has upgraded this use almost to an art form. Should not the media ask themselves whether they are being manipulated when they cover certain pseudo-events? Many times this is not an easy question to answer as it is not always easy to decide what to report or not.
There is, though, another important consideration. We live in the age of social media. A piece of ‘news’ not reported by the mainstream media can spread like wild fire on the social media. Its presence there and its absence on the legacy media can raise the accusation that the latter are censoring the item, thus fuelling more the discussion and perhaps giving it the credibility it does not deserve.
Reporting the Isis threat but pooh-poohing it and creating a discussion about the reportage on the social media could have been an option.
The role of the media in such circumstances is not an easy one, and different positions can be legitimately arrived at. Similarly difficult is the role of government. It was unwise for the Home Affairs Minister to scoff at reports that the army had been placed under some form of alert, only to be discredited by media reports and the grapevine since some kind of alert was really in place.
I think the Prime Minister was wiser to note that though there was no credible evidence of any imminent threat to our country government took precautionary action just the same.
Even in 1980 it was not possible for the government to hide the fact that Muammar Gaddafi had sent a gunboat to force the stoppage of the exploration for oil by Malta. Rumour and the international press made the government and Xandir Malta look like fools, denying what everyone knew to be a fact, which even government had been forced to eventually acknowledge.
The government has no option but to come clean in this Facebook generation. Truth and transparency should be the indisputable rules of the game in government’s communication with the people. Accuracy and truth should be among the core values the media follow in deciding whether to publish or not, while avoiding harm should be a close third.
joseph.borg@um.edu.mt