Is it a silly season or a fairy story-telling season that is affecting our media? Is it the summer heat or is it something worse? Is there a conspiracy against the Church or is there rampart incompetence? Read on ....

L-Orizzont of Saturday August 13 informed us with quite a large front page heading that the Curia was ready to pay compensation to the victims of sex abuse by priests at St Joseph's House, Sta Venera. Then on Monday, August 15, the paper informed us through another large heading spread on five columns on page 5 that the Curia was not ready to give any compensation to the victims. Was someone at the Curia playing the "compensation yes, compensation no" game or have Curia officials gone crazy? If there is any craziness it is certainly not on the side of the Curia and its officials.

Anyone who cared to read with a degree of attentiveness L-Orizzont's report of Saturday August 13, would have noticed that the report carried nothing which justified a heading saying that the Church was ready to give compensation. And anyone who read the report of August 15 would have noticed that there is nothing in the report which justified the heading that the Curia was not ready to give compensation to the victims.

We had two reports featuring two headings none of which is supported by the contents of the report! Anyone who works in the media knows that many people read the headings and then just scan the contents; if at all. Where these heading chosen on purpose to give readers a perception that is not borne out by the facts? Was it a case of another malicious attempt against the Curia or was it a case of crass incompetence?

I do not know whether the heading is the work of the journalists who pens the story of the work of someone else. In many media organization the heading is not written by the journalist. If this is the case with L-orizzont, then the journalists in question should not be blamed for the headings. What I do know is that Monday's report is a sloppy piece of work. The journalist who penned it (and also penned another sloppy story on page three) is a former student of our faculty and an official of the council of the Malta Institute of Journalists to boot.

The report also says that One News revealed that the victims are asking for a compensatory sum varying from Euro9 million to Euro11 million. Had the journalist bothered to check that story instead of just repeating it, he would have found out that the story was simply not true. The Times of Tuesday August 16 blew the story to smithereens. The report also states that the police are "silent" about the allegations that are being leveled against Fr Sciberras, another member of MSSP. I read the report and as far as I could read the police answered all the questions that were intelligent enough to require an answer.

L-Orizzont is not the only paper guilty of such sloppy work. Unfortunately it is all over the media. Many reports are not to be trusted or believed. This sloppy attitude is correlated by an arrogant attitude that more and more reporters are excelling in. I would like someone to do a dissertation studying the hypothesis that an attitude "ta' ras kbira" is correlated to a paucity of grey matter. The less grey matter one has the more ras kbira attitude is witnessed.

The amount of general knowledge of many in the trade is abysmal. I had – if I remember correctly – narrated the true story about University students who did not know who Aristorle and Confucius are. I referred to the former as an Australian archeologist of the eighteenth century and to the latter as a Spanish scientist of the fourteenth century. When I asked whether this was correct or not I discovered, to my great surprise, that all said that I was correct except one who said that Aristotle was a Greek.

I was shocked this year to discover that when the Wikileaks controversy was at its height only six out of a class of over 40 had a good idea of what the controversy was about.

A question to Dr Brincat

One of the problems with current public discourse is people's inability to make distinctions. For many people, things are black or white; good or bad; for us or against us. There are, for many, no grey areas. There is nothing which is partly good or partly bad. No one is in agreement with us on some aspects but in disagreement with us on other aspects.

A person who is able to make distinction is Dr Joe Brincat. I love it whenever he writes in this blog. His contributions are valid and of high caliber. (This does not mean that I always agree with him. One subject of disagreement is his position about sub judice cases.) This week he really took over this blog. I apologize for not being in a position as to comment on most of the valid points and questions he raised. I only reacted to the ones that begged for an urgent answer.

In a serious but teasing spirit just the same, I wish to present this case for his comment.

Magistrate Demicoli in his sentence on the case of the religious found guilty of sex abuse said that one of them had in fact also committed rape. However, since he was accused of committing rape in Marfa when he actually committed it in S Venera, he could not be condemned of this crime.

Although this religious was freed of this crime, will anyone calling him a rapist be saying something improper or incorrect? Isn't he a rapist though he was not found guilty as accused?

Being acquitted by a Court of Law is not necessarily a declaration that one has not committed an evil act. Or am I missing something?