My writing debut for this newspaper came with the ‘new broom’ at Strickland House in October 2007. Steve Mallia and Herman Grech were about to take over as editor and deputy editor of The Sunday Times of Malta, and there was a call for new columnists and fresh ideas. I was asked to join the team.
I was chuffed… I was anxious. Did I have it in me to write an article every week or fortnight? Would I be able to meet deadlines? Would I manage to say everything in a thousand words?
Knowing that a newspaper is holding space for you, writer’s block or not, is daunting. I wavered between acceptance and polite refusal.
Well, you know the rest: I decided not to spend the rest of my life agonising over a missed opportunity. I resigned my position at the Office of the Attorney General and left a secure and adequately paid government job for a fortnightly column without security or even the guarantee that I’d survive the summer. I have no regrets. Had I remained in work, many articles would not have been written. It would have forced me to stick with anodyne subjects like Christmas and Women’s Day.
I don’t want this to sound like a nostalgic ‘memorial’, but I thought of writing this after last Sunday’s editorial – which I immediately recognised as Steve Mallia’s – a fine and dignified piece of writing: the kind that resonates with decent people, especially those who support responsible journalism and deplore the underhand and unscrupulous.
I have been thinking a lot about this newspaper and the privilege of being a small part of it.
My relationship with the editors has always been low-key. I e-mail my column and hear nothing. Once upon a time I’d barrage them with e-mails querying changes they’d made, but I was always discreetly stonewalled. I found this refusal to engage rather odd; but I learned to live with it.
The editors were always good to me. I was never told what to write, and certainly never what not to write – with one exception. This was a week before the March 2013 election. I’m not consciously denunciatory, but I suppose my article on that occasion was too focused on an individual allied to the Nationalist Party, and my editor told me so…
What I find most disturbing… is that we are living at a time when flippant allegations are taken as messianic certainties
He said: “In my opinion, as the registered editor, the article, which focused solely on one individual who is not even directly involved in politics, went too far and had no place in The Sunday Times.”
I was incensed. I interpreted this fire-walling as kow-towing to the Nationalists. But with the benefit now of hindsight I warmly applaud my editor’s decision not to publish.
Which is why I find it so terribly unfair that these same editors have had to face unsubstantiated allegations, and justify themselves and their editorial polices, even to the extent of pointing out that the journalistic side of the Allied Group is quite separate from the commercial. It is also a lie to suggest that their decision to target the calamitous Arriva during the run-up to the 2013 election was political.
I find the effrontery of those who took this newspaper to task for doing its job very ominous. These are people of smoke and mirrors who are prepared to claim that this newspaper is tainted because something does not sit right with their own divinely ordained (Nationalist?) plan for Malta.
What I find most disturbing, however, is that we are living at a time when flippant allegations are taken as messianic certainties. If someone is brazen enough to claim something, then lo and behold, it must be true, even in the absence of proof. The burden of proof instead shifts to the accused, whose silence is interpreted as acquiescence, and failure to sue as guilt. And of course the accuser, shrouded by the smoke of deceit and flashing the mirror of distortion, counts on everyone’s gullibility and superficial judgement. Love of gossip, partisan prejudice and schadenfreude complete the picture.
If dodgy dealing exists, let’s investigate it properly. But I don’t think I’m being naive when I demand prudence and caution. We are dealing with people’s lives; people with families and children. If someone is guilty, let justice be done. But let’s not burn people at the stake.
On a far less serious level, this happened to me in 2013 when I was accused of ghostwriting for Franco Debono. Hardly a crime or a scandal, and yet, it still wasn’t true. My vehement denial was interpreted as ‘protesting too much’, my brushing aside as acquiescence. People still believe I wrote those articles because the internet said so.
People who traffic in accusations do so in the knowledge that people love nothing more than the spectacle of a public execution. And others who want to believe that the law of libel exists to address this malpractice are sorely mistaken.
Certain untruths may not be libellous, but they’re still untruths. And even if they are libellous, why should you be forced to protest your innocence in court? Court proceedings are a drain on money, time and emotion. Some people can’t afford to go down that road. Some can’t hack it. And there lies the calculating evil of the accusers, with the absolute power to ruin lives.
I am here reminded of the words of John Proctor in The Crucible, Arthur Miller’s riveting play about the 1692 Salem witch-hunts: “We are what we always were in Salem, but now the little crazy children are jangling the keys of the kingdom, and common vengeance writes the law!”
To those witch-hunters among us (until one of their own is involved) I’ll pose William Golding’s crucial question… Which is better – to have laws and agree, or to hunt and kill? Let’s stop this witch hunt, let the people be brought before the laws of justice, and let justice decide who the innocent and/or guilty are, not the incantations of the people, nor the ravenous crowd.
michelaspiteri@gmail.com