John Sweeney is a British investigative journalist. He works for BBC’s Panorama and Newsnight series and he was in Malta this time last year reporting on the assassination of the Daphne Caruana Galizia. He was here again last week to give a memorial lecture in honour of the slain journalist.
[attach id=677354 size="medium" align="right"]Journalists are not meant to be PR mouthpieces for political parties, although it’s difficult to understand this in our country. Photo: Shutterstock[/attach]
Sweeney, in his imitable roaring style, talked about the rules of fair journalism and how it is universally understood that in a democracy, good independent journalists should give equal weight, over time, to two sides of a political argument.
But he also said that a good journalist has to practise ‘due impartiality’. Now, this is an old BBC phrase, coined to address the concept of equal time in broadcast debate. But hark! The ‘due’ in ‘due impartiality’ is a very important prefix: it is often more than a simple matter of ‘balance’ between opposing viewpoints. To quote the BBC guidelines: “It does not require absolute neutrality on every issue or detachment from fundamental democratic principles.”
Sweeney gave an example in his lecture: “We didn’t report the start of the World War II impartially.” The British papers, for neutrality’s sake did not run articles taking the side of the Nazis and running interviews with SS saying: “Achtung! We were very concerned about Poland possibly violating border agreements, so our invasion is justified, Ya?”
Instead the British media took stock of the situation, realised that there was a German dictator-in-the-making, and rightly so, pointed their guns at him. In the same manner today, said Sweeney, “if the evidence stacks up that the Church of Scientology is a cult, or North Korea is a tyranny, we make that call”.
Therefore, in his answer to cries of supporters of the Prime Minister Joseph Muscat that in his reporting he is not complying with the rules of journalistic fair play, he simply quoted the concept of due impartiality. “If we see a journalist murdered in cold blood and what looks like a government cover-up, we can call that too.”
The government’s reply to that was: “As usual, he [Sweeney] did not check his facts.” The only fact he had to check was, of course, whether a journalist had been blown up or not.
If we see a journalist murdered in cold blood and what looks like a government cover-up, we can call that too
The government said the same thing to Simon Reeve, the British television presenter about his recent feature on Malta in his BBC programme Mediterranean with Simon Reeve. Sarah Puntan Galea, former Sunday Circle editor, now Castille spinner, tweeted: “Disappointing show yesterday Simon Reeve. If you’re going to criticise Malta please have the decency to have factual proof for accusations you repeat.”
You could tell from Reeve’s reply that his eyes had popped out with incredulity: “You’re from the office of Malta PM?! Factual proof?! Have you lost the plot?! Daphne was BLOWN-UP + Malta rule of law concern, elite corruption, multiple bomb attacks #oh cr** you’re in charge #in total denial”.
The government does not seem to understand that a reporter’s job is to feel the evidence, not just hear it from the authorities and repeat it. Journalists are not meant to be PR mouthpieces for political parties, although it’s difficult to understand this in our country because half the media is employed by political parties.
The few independent journalists here don’t have it easy. As the NGOs in the international freedom of expression mission to Malta said on Friday, they face defamation lawsuits, online vitriol and blocked access to information, and yet their due impartiality is keeping Malta’s conscience alive and for that we must be truly grateful.
The other day I was listening to a podcast in intermediate French. It is one of the things I do when stuck in traffic. At this rate, by the end of the year I’ll probably be more advanced than Emmanuel Macron.
In any case, the podcast was about the Milgram experiment in the 1960s, and it was so intriguing that I was actually happy I was at a standstill on Birkirkara Bypass.
This was a social psychology experiment carried out in the 1960s in the US at Yale University by psychologist Stanley Milgram. The experiment was to test people’s willingness to obey an authority figure even if the instructions went against their personal conscience.
The participants were told they were taking part in a “scientific study of memory and learning” in which they as ‘teachers’ had to administer electric shocks to a ‘learner’ – an actor who pretended to be a volunteer.
Did the participants stop and refuse to keep on giving the electrical shocks when they saw the (actor) learner yelling, protesting and banging repeatedly on the wall?
You would think they would, but the experiment results showed that when the person in authority told them they had to continue, the vast majority of men fully obeyed the instructions.
The experiment was repeated many times around the globe, in different formats with fairly consistent results: the majority of the men did not go against the authority even when they knew that what they were doing something wrong.
Perhaps it’s good to be aware of this, so that we let no authority tamper with our conscience.
krischetcuti@gmail.com
Twitter: @KrisChetcuti
This is a Times of Malta print opinion piece