Napoleon Bonaparte.

I refer to two prominent articles carried by The Sunday Times of Malta over the last two weeks, on December 29 and January 5, about the French period. In his first contribution, author Thomas Zerafa hails Hardman (1909) and Testa (1997) as being “rich in detail... quoting extant documents”, with which I concur.

Though both books may have been useful to researchers of archival material on this period, it does not automatically mean that their interpretations have produced the best account of history. History being ‘an unending dialogue between the present and the past’ requires objectivity that is rising above one’s limit to project a vision of the future with a profound, lasting insight into the past.

As it turned out, Zerafa, with his preferred selection of ‘facts’ and documents, seems to have opted for a romantic narrative with detailed particularities, typical of scores of others written by British and Maltese authors over the last two centuries.

Such articles may make interesting reading but given such prominence in the Maltese press 50 years after the country’s independence might carry little weight by way of critical analysis of Maltese history and identity. In my recent research on how the media treated this period, I came across hundreds of distorted examples.

Since the Maltese media landscape does not include a popularly diffused, academic digest on history, as many other societies fortunately have, scholarly debate has to be carried out solely at the favour of the popular press.

That puts greater responsibility on newspaper editors in their endeavour to serve the community. It very often also restrains the contributor to opt for a journalistic choice of language without carrying any references to content.

It is worth remembering that narrative distortions or omissions are not always readily detected in textual content. The timing of the articles, the editorial placement, the choice, size and colour of pictures and titles can all contribute to subtle manipulation.

In Zerafa’s first instalment on December 29, Napoleon Bonaparte’s distraught portrait was chosen from his late, difficult life when, in reality, the young general arrived in Malta aged only 29 at the start of a brilliant military and political career (see photograph).

For the record, the illustrious grandmaster accompanying the same article referred to as Ferdinand von Hompesch is, in actual fact, Emmanuel Pinto.