The Day Journalism Died

The J’accuse column on the Independent today – a summary of this week’s analysis of an episode of Bondiplus – Winner of the Best Current Affairs Programme at the Malta Television Awards.

Last Monday, journalism in Malta descended to an unprecedented depth. For a long time now, Maltese journalism has had to carry the labels and innuendos that are the result of being just another graft in the political game between two behemoths intent on a zero-sum race to mediocrity. The lack of quality and audacity in journalism was at first a spin-off and then an accomplice of the great numbing and dumbing down of public perception.

Until Monday the 22nd, journalism was a victim of partisan bigotry turned perpetrator. Last Monday, in a programme conducted by Malta’s record holding, longest-running talk-show host, this unholy alliance of political convenience and neutered journalism gave birth to a new child: political expediency as we know it was blended away and the “journalistic” Frankenstein attempted clumsily to take its first few steps in its very own interests. Elsewhere they’ve taken to calling it “wheels within wheels”.

Gurnalizmu fuq kollox

Last Monday’s edition of Bondiplus hammered the final nail into the coffin of “investigative journalism” in Malta. Readers of J’accuse will already be familiar with the two-part posting in which I outlined how Bondiplus on Monday the 22nd February was a sorry advert for investigative journalism today (visit www.akkuza.com for an in-depth analysis). Lou Bondi, who, if you were to go by the spiel on the Where’s Everybody website, is a record-breaker in Maltese talk-show land, made a meal of this programme that was supposed to be an investigation into the Caruana Galizia and Scerri Herrera saga – what we at J’accuse call “Plategate”.

They did not call it “Plategate”. They couldn’t for reasons best known to them and which we can assume from their subsequent behaviour. Lou Bondi opted to promote this programme on Facebook thusly: “Il-blog ta’ Daphne Caruana Galizia, il-Magistrat Consuelo Scerri Herrera u il-Perit Robert Musumeci diskussi l-lejla f’Bondiplus”. A few moments later he would add that anyone expecting sensationalism would be disappointed. – Bondiplus after all boasts the slogans “journalism above all” and “thinking allowed”.

Once the programme kicked off we were told that its aim would be to examine “il-principji li jincidu fuq dan id-dibattitu pubbliku” (The principles that apply to this public debate). The vaguely defined remit of the programme was basically an extension of Fr Joe Borg’s ethical disquisitions – the demarcation between public and private, the duty of journalists to report, how far one can invade the private lives of public persons, when should a journalist report (at some point there was a huge screen with “Meta ghandhom jinkixfu il-borom?” – or something to that effect).

It turned out to be anything but that, and managed to create more questions than answers in the process. I have had a taster of Lou Bondi’s inability to engage in an argument without resorting to personal attacks. This week we witnessed his written mauling of a colleague of the printed press who dared ask Bondi a set of pertinent questions regarding last Monday’s programme. I had asked some of these questions myself in the aforementioned posts on my blog and I was not surprised that there was quite an overlap with those asked by Matthew Vella. The fact is that any freethinking individual endowed with a critical mentality would come up with the same questions.

J’accuse

From the moment Lou Bondi’s caveat of being “friends” with the (ancillary) subjects of his programme came through the screen, you could sense that it was all going to go Pete Tong. Fr Joe Borg being the only guest on the programme came as no surprise, since Daphne had already informed her readers of this long before Bondiplus had told its viewers. The two men sat in front of each other going through the motions of a question and answer session about the ethical issues behind the whole hullabaloo while actually demonstrating as much investigative journalism as could be expected of Pravda or Granma at the height of communist Soviet Union and Cuba combined.

At one point in the programme Lou explained (to Fr Borg – who else?) that journalists could take a piece of news and make it this size (spreads arms wide) or make it this size (almost touches index fingers together). He was obviously referring to the power of the editor to choose certain screenshots and not others, adopt certain tones in voiceovers and – most crucial of all – present a story from a particular perspective. The irony was lost on both men; while they claimed to discuss the elephant in the room they seemed intent on doing anything but that – and they used the complete control of the medium at hand to try to avoid doing so. Which leads us to the great indictment.

Bias

If Lou Bondi wanted to discuss the ethical principles behind the issue of private and public lives and the duties of journalists when faced with information such as that contained in the allegations, why did he hold back the information that he too was present at one of the meals hosted by Magistrate Herrera that are at the source of “Plategate”? How could he believe that this was not a crucial piece of the puzzle – a piece just as crucial as his honest declaration that all parties to the scandal are his friends? What makes Bondi believe that he is capable of adopting “a clinical approach while investigating” – when even one of his friends accuses (Times editor) Ray Bugeja on her blog of not being able to do the same for having also been present at some dinner party?

What is at the basis of the editorial choice to start the programme with the police interrogation, thus casting Daphne as the victim and deviating from the crucial point (from a journalistic and ethical point of view) that “Plategate” started off as a vendetta? It is an obvious conscious decision of the producer to weave and present the story in pieces and in the wrong chronological order. Here is a programme examining ethical questions facing journalists as to when they are entitled to gather information, and when they should divulge it, only to blatantly ignore the facts that were available, thanks to Daphne’s own admission in her blog at the start of “Plategate”.

Bondi chose to take Daphne’s blog (as well as the pieces Daphne allowed Bondi to have of her interrogation) as the full evidence on Daphne’s side. Incredible. Malta’s self-declared sans pareil of investigative journalism failed to bring Daphne on stage for some cross-questioning Bondi-style. Why? It’s all too easy.

Blind Men’s Bluff

It was not just easy, it also fit in with the second important piece of Bondi’s jigsaw. Media expert Fr Joe Borg had already woven together the first parts of the next piece with his claim of an “ungilded silence” – the same claim that we answered last week. The theory goes that within the mainstream media and blogosphere it is only Fr Joe Borg who appears to want to tackle the issues behind “Plategate”. According to his most recent post: “The mainstream media have a role to play: a role of investigation and commentary. This role is being abjectly abdicated”– a claim that is absolutely absurd.

Searching for one of the posts on my blog, I checked the Sunday papers of 21 February and counted 10 articles that dealt with “Plategate”. Throughout Monday’s Bondiplus, reference was made to two articles from the Sunday papers – none of which feature on my list. The first was the satirical column in it-Torca and the second was an article in Illum by Toni Abela. Father Borg’s radar in the media only seems to light up when he is somehow offended. He showed a superficial ability to remember (vaguely) an offensive part of a column in It-Torca (even forgetting the author’s pseudonym) but still fails to see the myriad other articles – including those directed at him (the J’accuse title in last week’s Indy was “Father Borg’s Guild of the Dumb”).

The only use Bondi had for Sunday papers was a “scoop” from Illum, which turned out to be no real scoop but a feeble attempt to conjure up an ethical example out of Toni Abela while the elephant in the room named “Daphne and Her Blog” continued to be ignored by the two gurus of the local media scene. I was tempted to put it down to research blunders – like Bondi’s obvious inability to get to grips with blogging jargon or Fr Borg’s lack of preparedness regarding the content of the codes of ethics under (journalistic) examination. It was not. It was blatantly obvious to anyone who cared to question that the real issues here were being skirted and that the programme was developing into one huge farce.

Lou (can’t) read

Had the programme stuck to its original aims, it would have performed a valuable service. There is a need for more journalistic verve and investigation. There is also a need for a clear pointer into the limits of the powers of the fourth estate. Bondiplus abdicated from this kind of investigation and instead fluffed on for the entirety of the programme, delving into useless sidetracking. They eliminated any possible alternative perspective and consciously ignored other points of view that were easily available. While Lou’s counterparts in the BBC were producing brilliant podcasts and programmes on super-injunctions, private lives v public interests and more, here was a programme that mistook non-sensationalism for neutered journalism – whether intentional or not the end effect was disastrous.

I understand that Malta is a small country and that Lou might have felt uncomfortable exposing his friends (or using them as examples) to the kind of questioning this programme needed. He would have been better off not doing the programme at all. In the end we could only conclude that it had no bite, no substance and absolutely no direction other than deviation and misinformation. His hysterical reaction to the few prodding questions that followed the airing only served to prove the point. I know well enough that I can expect the same treatment – and have no problem with that. This is my feedback – an extensive version of which is available on the blog in two parts (posts entitled: “Blind Men’s Bluff” and “Lou Can’t Read”).

The difference between J’accuse (the blog and column) from a MaltaToday journalist is the simple fact that Bondi cannot claim that I have any vested interest other than obtaining the truth. The Bondiplus programme shied away from asking the real questions. It is the culmination point of the race to mediocrity that we have been pointing at for too long. With this kind of programming one of the main checks and balances of democratic society crashes to the ground faster than a World Trade Centre tower. It is a dangerous premonitory signal of things to come. Ironically, the very actions Bondiplus was supposed to investigate last Monday had already served as a warning themselves. Bondiplus served to turn a spotlight on the existing vacuum.

La Lumière

I see this article (and parallel blog posts) as “just a revolutionary medium to speed the explosion of truth and justice. I have just one passion, that of the light, in the name of humanity that has so suffered and has the right to happiness. My flaming protestation is just the cry of my soul.” Those are not my words; they are those of Emile Zola, the original J’accuse.

When almost five years ago (10 March 2005) I began blogging on J’accuse I did so with the same spirit of journalistic enthusiasm as I do today. You, the reader, are asked to view today’s indictment as a warning. Our society may have many hidden corners that are rotting away and that need to be exposed in order to be renewed and fixed. But if the first trenches of the guardians of our society, the searchers for the truth, can so easily abdicate their responsibility then we are in for a hard time – and don’t expect those that have long nurtured and fed off the bad habits to lift a finger to change that.

I cannot sufficiently stress that the full analysis of what went wrong on Monday 22nd February is available on www.akkuza.com. J’accuse is proud to inform its readers that it has been selected for the third Thinkaboutit! Blogging Competition (Developing World) that kicks off in Brussels in March.