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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.
I think you “doth protest too much, methinks”.
Most of the media pratcially failed to report anything on the famous or infamous blog and most commentators, similarly, rightly or wrongly, also ignored it as well or referred to it only obliquely. In fact The Times of Malta made its own apologia pro inertia mea (or sua instead of mea?).
The media in many other countries would, to my mind, have adopted a different approach and would have reported the issue as a news item.
The Maltese media maybe feared libel action or else considered the allegations in the blog as relating only to the private life of the persons involved.
The TV programme also took this prudent view. However as far as I know it was the only programme to deal with this issue.
on mediocrity
Extract from today’s stom
“The difference between us and them is that we are building the country while the others run it down and complain of mediocrity,” Dr Gonzi said. What sort of mediocrity was this when the concerns which investors had was about finding enough workers, and where accountancy firms sought to contract university students in only their first year? unquote
What kind of mediocrity? marsa power station still providing 50% of energy needs at significant environmental and financial cost, quality of air we breathe, our tv fare, waiting lists, roads, public transport, participation of women in the economy, number of families living on a part-time job, no divorce, no national contemporary art gallery, valletta entrance, quality of urban infrastructure, level of illiteracy, possibly the only country in the world that flushes its loos using drinkable water, xarabank portrayed as being malta’s leading discussion programme, noise pollution, prison conditions, state of our countryside, my moaning…
A ray of hope is that the suggestion that we breed a mediocrity culture may be itching our pm. good I say. Knowing that we have a problem is half way towards improving matters…
Danny
If you really think that Malta’s the only country that flushes its loo with potable you should really do more traveling AND visit the toilet more often.
@ David Borg…but what did you expect the “media” to report exactly…the innuendo and rants of someone who has a personal vendetta? Has dcg blog’s become the agenda setter for what newspapers, TV stations and other media deem to be newsworthy? It is now very obvious that that is what she wanted, for otherwise why drag alison bezzina, Fr Borg, lou bondi and anyone else who thinks she is right, into the whole mess to stick up for her (that’s what it looks like to me anyway.)
When she saw she was alone in all this, because anyone with half a brain was wary of her motives, she tried to create media interest where none existed
I’m surprised we haven’t yet had a whole xarabank prog about daphne and her blog. Or haven’t they figured out a way to do it in a convincing way without falling flat on their face a la bondi?
If she wakes up one day and starts digging into the private life of, say, the President of Malta, should the mainstream media pick up the “story” and turn it into “news” just because daphne says so?
This is why I think lou should have interviewed newspaper editors (as he has done in the past) to ask them what made them take the position they did vis a vis the blogger v magistrate story
@Anna- maybe. On the other hand that does not automatically mean that all the allegations are to be flushed down the toilet. I see two issues here:
1) The substance of the allegations (if any) required proper treatment in the proper fora (forums for Charles Cauchi-ists). Whether they will get that treatment or not and whether they will warrant wider investigation or not is still to be seen (not to mention the questions whether other similar public officials might be in a position to be investigated).
2) The issue of journalistic investigation and ethics. Which is what you seem to be most concerned with. In this case there has been a sort of discussion with different levels of commitment. Some wrote by allusion – cf. Marie Benoit’s article on Edgar Hoover as a typical example, or Pamela Hansen discussing the issue of public vs private without dealing with the most glaring example at hand. Why they did so is their business (cyberbullying might be a reason) but the issue remains open and undecided. To give an example, the recent issue of Super-injuctions in the UK has been dissected and analysed by members of the printed and blogging press community alike. Where is that discussion here? Bondiplus?
P.S. When I say “flushed down the toilet” I mean both by potable or non-potable water.
@fausto: how about a zolabyte on this new trend to call for free votes? looks like its right down your research alley! I’m hoping to deal with it (and what it says about “Joseph’s Labour”) later this week.
@jrz.
Sorry, too busy at the moment.
But yeah, there’s definitely much to say about asking a Party leader to give a “free vote” to MPs when you’re engaging in intimidatory talk about “traitors” and “Judases” and hinting at retribution if elected reps don’t vote your way.
Oh, and this is from the same people who’s reaction to a government Minister saying that taking people to the street is not exactly helpful was that this was a threat to democracy and freedom.
Fausto, you say that quote this is from the same people who’s reaction to a government Minister saying that taking people to the street is not exactly helpful was that this was a threat to democracy and freedom. unquote
saying that the protests are not exactly helpful is indeed a mild observation that renders risible any claim that such a statement can be undemocratic.
Now may i take an extract from yesterday’s tom:
So could anyone explain what was the justification for the protest?
The answer, Dr Gonzi said, was that it was in the interest of the Opposition to harm the country. unquote
An accusation of protesting to harm the country is, in my opinion, a grave and systematic statement that leads to the ‘criminalization’ of opposition, hence a claim to being undemocratic may indeed have its merits.
Danny, making an outlandish statement is neither criminal not undemocratic (see, for example, the case of Mark Lombardo against the Fgura Local Council on what’s permitted by way of criticism in politics).
Making threats, however veiled, on elected public officials, including organising a show of force when they’re deliberating and taking a vote, is a different matter altogether.
one oulandish staement-agreed … systematic, undemocratic
Michael Falzon’s (NP) contribution yesterday was very sobering indeed
potable suggests ‘fit’ for drinking while drinkable water may not be necessarily so fit to drink. Now flushing alternatives may also include the ‘vacuum’ option… ok i shut up :)
Fausto,
It seems that you are right. I made a true and proper dunny out of myself. Any chance of replacing my faux pas with say, a slapdash traffic-management culture or a tacky notte bianca mentality?
It is only fair that, having mentioned our trafic-management culture (gwardiani and all – still not reformed?) I should also mention the good work done on our roudabouts.