Fil-knisja kien hemm skiet taqtgħu b’sikkina” (literally “the silence inside the church was so deep you could cut it with a knife”) is how TVM news chose to describe the atmosphere at Nicholas Gera’s funeral. It didn’t seem to occur to the reporter to leave knives alone for the day. But then this whole case has been mishandled by the media in such a way that makes the mother of all gaffes seem trivial.

I’ve never seen people enjoy a tragedy so much. Some of the comments were cruel to the point of viciousness, many banal, and all completely useless- Mark-Anthony Falzon

I wasn’t thinking of writing about the Gera-Zammit murders. It’s the type of story that threatens to push an opinion column into the ambit of useless gossip and sensationalism. Two things made me change my mind.

First, I feel doubly sorry for the families and friends of the two dead men. That is to say I feel sorry in two ways. The first has to do with their private grief, and I can only sympathise as best I can. The second concerns the way they have been made to suffer the consequences of a bumbling media that can’t tell a good story from tasteless rubbish.

The second reason follows. Inasmuch as one can generalise, the business is now a public matter. That’s because it has to do with the state of the art. I shall argue that, with a very few exceptions, journalism in Malta has taken a turn for the cheapest.

The first few hours, perhaps the first day or two, are the litmus of good practice. It’s easy enough to get all cautious and level-headed once the initial reaction subsides.

It’s how one breaks the story that really matters, not least because first reports cast a long shadow on subsequent discussion. I’d say most journalists failed the test miserably.

The first reports screamed of a hero who defended his home and family – which included twins no less – against a mad and faceless would-be burglar. A few hours later it dawned on some journalists that there may have been more to it than that. So they proceeded to speculate along the usual lines (sex and all that), the idea apparently being to right the reports unbalanced by themselves in the first place.

My point is not that Zammit is not a hero. That and better he may well be. But it’s certainly pig-headed and unprofessional to rush into a story brandishing big words like that plus Facebook photos of twins to boot.

This links up to a despicable trend I’ve had occasion to mention before. These days, news is not just about reporting known facts and letting consumers make up their own hearts. It’s graduated to a vapid cringefest that sets sad stories to ‘sad’ music, uses adjectives like they would otherwise deplete the planet’s oxygen, and so on.

The Zammit-Gera case was not spared. PBS actually treated us to Angelo Xuereb leafing through his family album, sobbing, and talking about his daughter being ready “eventually to forgive” Gera – all to one of Coldplay’s more melancholic tunes. It was a painful sight.

The obvious objection is that he should not have played along. But that’s too easy. It’s obvious that Xuereb is set on clearing his family’s name here. Probably reasoning that silence would be deafening, he’s been drawn into a PR campaign. Which is most unfair on someone who is not a PR man and who in any case had absolutely nothing to do with the murders.

There’s another thing. Ours is a world obsessed with ethics, data protection, and political correctness. It’s not alright to publish exam results on a University noticeboard, for example; that’s because exam marks are data that belong to the individual. Nor is it right to call people ‘deaf’; ‘hard of hearing’ is apparently more respectful and ‘inclusive’. And so on. It does, however, seem perfectly acceptable to monger, in public and in writing, stories about the sexual orientation – and by implication deceitfulness, at least in the case of Duncan Zammit – of two dead men.

Or to bring viewers close-ups of a grieving mother.

Those data are not thought worthy of protection. They can even be quite happily made up and peddled in fact, as long as the word ‘sources’ (which carries the added benefit of making the journalist seem well-informed) is used.

‘Informed sources told this newspaper’... yeah, right.

As for the online comments, let’s not even go there. In truth, I’ve never seen people enjoy a tragedy so much. Some of the comments were cruel to the point of viciousness, many banal, and all completely useless. I can see the point of giving readers the chance to comment on an opinion piece, but a report of a double murder? What on earth could readers ever usefully add to that?

This is where the Press Ethics Commission comes in. I really think online newspapers should be encouraged (by the scruff of the neck if necessary) to provide comment boards only where appropriate. There’s absolutely nothing to be gained from commenting on a murder. But there’s a lot to be lost, and that includes decency towards families who find themselves sucked into a murky world of banality and sick humour.

I also think the Commission should say something about sensationalism and especially pseudo-sentimentality of the ‘sad music’ type. I don’t think it’s alright to zoom into a grieving parent’s face, or to watch as Xuereb breaks down over his family album. That’s emotional voyeurism of the worst kind.

mafalzon@hotmail.com