If you had to go by many of the heated exchanges on social media, you would think that fake news is a recent phenomenon – some new blight obscuring the true, genuine news that should be reported. There are also a flurry of initiatives being undertaken to combat the dispersal of fake news.
I can’t help feeling that we’re trying to reinvent the wheel and forgetting the fact that fake news has been around forever – it basically consists of untrue information being circulated with or without some ulterior motive. One way of combatting fake news is to suspend judgment until its original source is identified and the source’s credibility ascertained. Unless allegations are substantiated, rushing to judgment will only result in injustice and the skewering of innocent parties.
A case in point is the recent one where a man claimed to have served part of a court sentence doing community work for Magistrate Joseph Mifsud – the same magistrate who had found him guilty.
The man sent text messages to his former partner, claiming that he carried out tiling works in the magistrate’s residence and that he had discussed ways of serving only half his sentence with the magistrate. Screenshots of the text messages were published.
These were horrendously grave allegations – but they were just that – allegations. The fact that the source of the allegations had conveyed his claims by means of text messages was not proof of their veracity – but merely of the fact that he was saying them. After months of having made the allegations, the man retracted them saying it was a “lie” he had fabricated to save his relationship with his second wife.
The injured parties in this saga are undoubtedly Magistrate Mifsud, his family and, to some extent, the institute of the judiciary. A person’s reputation may be shattered simply because of a mad rush to judgment before bothering to verify the facts. In essence that is the problem created by fake news – one which can be averted by having the basic decency to substantiate allegations before rushing to print.
Over the last four years, 43 applications for new fuel stations have been approved. That makes it one new fuel station a month. More are in the pipeline – approval of which will lead us to having an absurdly disproportionate number of fuel stations when compared to distances on the island.
Unless allegations are substantiated, rushing to judgment will only result in injustice and the skewering of innocent parties
The justification for this proliferation of fuel stations is that they are being located away from town centres where they pose a safety hazard to residents. This may hold true for the fuel stations which are being relocated. It certainly doesn’t hold water for completely new fuel stations which are not displacing or removing a danger but simply taking up more ODZ land.
What’s even worse is that the new fuel stations get to be accompanied with ancillary facilities such as auto parts shops, cafeterias, car washes, cash dispensers and garages.
The policy no longer makes sense any way you look at it. It doesn’t make sense to have refuelling stations every couple of hundred metres, when you’re trying to encourage a modal shift towards alternative transport. It makes even less sense in view of the fact that Malta is now set to discuss a cut-off date for the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles, as many EU and western countries are doing. Electric charging stations don’t require huge tracts of land in rural areas – in fact they would be more useful in urban areas.
As for these ancillary services, how crucial are they? How will even more cafeterias and car washes contribute to our quality of life? How is driving from one cafeteria to another going to change our obesogenic society?
Whichever way you look at it, the fuel policy no longer promotes beneficial ends and should be overhauled.
drcbonello@gmail.com