In my early days as a contributor to this newspaper, I once wrote about how we Maltese respected the privacy of our public figures. (‘Unfaithfully yours’ … February 17, 2008). Because until then, with a few minor exceptions, private lives had been off limits and the custom was to protect politicians and other high- profile individuals from the prying eyes of media scrutiny. 

We didn’t really have the equivalent of tabloid newspapers, so gossip and private scandals never leaked into the mainstream media. I wasn’t to know that two weeks later (to the day) the launch of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s Running Commentary would put an end to that Age of Innocence. Coincidence? Perhaps.  

Caruana Galizia broke the taboo and turned what wasn’t even a cottage industry into a skyscraper enterprise . Years before – 2001? – Malta Today had published details of a ‘high-ranking’ police officer’s extramarital affair, which in due course led to his resignation. 

In Caruana Galizia’s own words, the reportage was “of the too much information variety”. Would she, at the time, have chosen to go down that road and publish, had she already been in the business of exposing the private lives of others? Would this have been an extramarital affair she’d have unearthed in the public interest? 

Perhaps that is neither here nor there, but I do recall her disenchantment with the reportage and her suspicion of the foreign woman who blew the whistle on that affair. And while Caruana Galizia had a point, (I too have an innate mistrust of whistleblowers and of women who kiss and tell), I can’t help but wonder whether she would have been quite so economical with the information or sceptical of ‘that foreign woman’ had the ‘high-ranking’ officer been ‘of-a-different-variety’. Someone like the incumbent Police Commissioner, for instance. 

2007/2008 was also the year Facebook took off. Malta was a few years behind but we soon latched on and turned into a circus of voyeurs and exhibitionists. By 2012 social media had exploded and smartphone technology gave everyone the power to publish and be damned. And publish they did. From sunsets to the food on their plate, from social spats to the full-blown horrors of war. William Shakespeare’s “all the world’s a stage” took on a new meaning. 

Caruana Galizia now had her work cut out – there was only some carefully guarded privacy left for her to investigate. Yet her stamina and audacity were preternatural and unassailable. Many tried to oppose her and failed. She was, by her own admission, a bruiser. Taking her on simply wasn’t a good idea. 

Ministers’ extramarital affairs or bordello tourism became therefore our standard fare, and no proof or corroboration was required. A flimsy ‘source’ sufficed

It took an inordinate amount of resilience – negative energy – to keep at it day in day out, especially in a country like Malta where you’re bound sooner or later to come face to face with your adversary. And to cap it all, it was open season: there was nothing that Caruana Galizia could not say, whenever she liked, about anyone she liked. From the President of the Republic to the girl next door, to the girl’s grandmother.  

The right to privacy, also recognised under the European Convention, simply did not apply. So talk of legal action was frowned upon and was itself regarded as illegal. Attempts to balance freedom of expression with the right to privacy were perceived as a gross interference with journalistic freedom and very ‘Third World’.

Ministers’ extramarital affairs or bordello tourism became therefore our standard fare, and no proof or corroboration was required. A flimsy ‘source’ sufficed.

Libel suits were not the resort of choice. Most finding themselves at the end of the pointing finger just didn’t want to go there because they knew they’d have to relive and rehash whatever ‘falsehood’ they were trying to forget or keep under wraps.

Unlike journalists in other parts of Europe, Caruana Galizia didn’t have to tread carefully at all. Maybe the touchiness and pettiness of our libel laws didn’t help – hardly hard-hitting arbiters of truth. The lies, unchallenged and immortalised, became self-evident truths and would be shared and savoured.  The sword of Damocles hovered.  Any attempt to wrest it from her hands, or to mount a legal challenge and clear your name, led to your being labelled undemocratic or of making life impossible for an investigative journalist going about her higher calling.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the phase we’re now in. Since that wicked murder, for the first time, words like ‘bullying’ and ‘intimidation’, which for so long were regarded as unwarranted offences against freedom of speech, are now grounds for actual complaint.

For years private citizens and public figures were forced to tolerate one person’s self-appointed freedom of expression and this was lauded in some quarters. Now we discover that when the boot is on the other foot there is unprecedented media frenzy and a very stern mention in Parliament.

So have we finally called time on the dangerous freedom of saying absolutely anything we like? Have we finally done away with this prurient and obsessive eavesdropping on ‘the lives of others’?

I woke up last Monday to the news that Tourism Minister Konrad Mizzi had attended a ‘Lost and Found’ party. Everyone was soon weighing in. Had Mizzi finally lost the plot? Had he finally found love? How puerile.  

Yes, standards in pubic life are important but we also need to cut politicians some slack and allow them to function socially. They need also to breathe the same air, and preferably get on a bus once in a while, or a bicycle.

Taking a politician to task for wearing Bermudas and sunglasses to a party and mixing with the ‘great unwashed’ is to call into question a larger part of the electorate. Why isolate and straitjacket the very people we have elected to represent us? 

The genuinely private should be respected. Public concerns are another matter.

michelaspiteri@gmail.com