Journalists present for the police briefing after the Marsa murder last week were positively surprised with the type of information they were given and the forthcoming manner in which senior officers there behaved. The same feeling was shared by the media people present on the crime scene itself a few hours earlier.
If it is sustained then it may well turn out to be one of the major achievements the force can boast of when it marks its 200th anniversary next year, making it one of the oldest in Europe. Of course, a healthy relationship between the police and journalists also means a strong rapport with society that the media represents and acts as a watchdog for.
This newspaper has repeatedly stressed the need for relations between the police and the media to improve. In an editorial entitled Hail, The Valiant Men And Womern In Blue, Times of Malta had noted that the police force “constantly failed to spot those opportunities where it could secure ever more cooperation by the public and, more so, to ‘use’ the media to its advantage”.
It continues to believe that the media is crucial in bringing the police and the people closer to each other.
There are indications that the new Police Commissioner, Peter Paul Zammit, is on the same wavelength too. He is known to have already met senior editorial people and took immediate internal action to set the ball rolling.
Of course, he would need the cooperation of every individual journalist and police officer.
The press must allow adequate time for this new ‘pro-media culture’ within the force to be nurtured.
On the other hand, officers need to understand what this ‘change’ really means because, yes, it does burden them with added responsibility but, ultimately, the respect, credibility and cooperation they rightly expect from the public can only be boosted. The police also have to learn to live with stories which reflect badly on the bad elements of the force.
The media relations standard operating procedures of the Metropolitan Police acknowledge that, while dealing with the media can, at times, be challenging, “an open and positive relationship is encouraged and will ultimately bring considerable benefit to us all”.
The document has a word of advice that many in Malta, and not only in the police force, should heed: “Saying ‘no comment’ or ‘not prepared to discuss’ to journalists can be just as detrimental as saying too much”.
How many times did the media plead, to no avail, for information from the police that it believed would help in tricky investigations? Here are just three instances: a criminal on the run who felt so at ease he could even walk into a bank and make a normal transaction because no details of his identity had been released; the bombing on a Transport Malta office; and the baby who had been abandoned outside a convent in Rabat.
On the other hand, we have seen police officials overseas address the media within hours, sometimes minutes, of any major incident taking place.
The police and the people, through the media, can work together. As Sir Robert Peel had said in the early 1880s, “the police are the public and the public are the police”.
To quote again from the Times of Malta editorial mentioned above: “Society is proud of its police force. Things can only improve if the force communicates better with the public both directly and through the media.”
Mr Zammit will find the well-meaning media behind him in his endeavours.