This week the article takes the form of an open reply to Father Borg’s efforts to contribute to the debate on the media, ethics and the private lives of saints and sinners in 21st century Malta.
Dear Fr Borg, in this week’s post on The Times (“On guilded silence and beyond”), you ask a few questions that J’accuse and its readers have been asking for some time now. You state: “Wherever you go, people are discussing this issue, taking, quite naturally, different sides. However, wonder of wonders, for the mainstream media it is as if nothing is happening. I find this silence quite strange or ungilded”. By “this issue”, you were of course referring to “Plate-Gate” – or the reaction of columnist and reluctant blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia to the rumour that a court case involving her would be reported in the mainstream media.
You then presented your readers with a series of questions. The aim, as I understand it, is an online exercise of disquisitions on the media and ethics. I still have enough faith in the online discussion boards to hope that this kind of debate can produce something positive, which is why I immediately grafted it onto www.akkuza.com. I engage readily in this kind of discussion for it has hit at the heart of the reasoning of what blogs can be about and the role they have in today’s society.
Space limitations require that I summarise your questions. (Readers can find the full questions on www.akkuza.com under the post entitled “The Guild of the Dumb”).
The questions
You first ask what should be the relationship between the public and private life of public persons and you wonder whether a line has been crossed when “some media make a feast day from a quarrel Daphne had with her husband”. You also ask whether Daphne is herself crossing a line with her comments about a magistrate and her friend.
In your second question you ask whether the stories are of legitimate public interest while stressing the difference between “public interest” and “of interest to the public” and stressing that information about criminal behaviour, gross misdemeanours or infringements of professional codes of ethics by public persons is normally considered to be within the public’s right to know.
In your third question you ask who is a public person and wonder whether Daphne’s definition based on people on the public payroll is too restrictive. You ask whether journalists should be considered to be public figures and extend the question to singers and artists while asking where we should draw the line.
Your next question asks whether private persons who participate in a legitimate activity together with public people should be considered fair game for media reporting and comment. Finally, you ask what is the proper use of Facebook and its content.
Feast Day
My first remark concerns the “feast day” reference you made. You might have meant “field day” but it is a curious slip of the pen on this island of “illum il-festa taghna naghmlu li rridu”. I have trouble defining a run of the mill court report on l-Orizzont as a “feast day” by the media. Surely we are used to that kind of reporting. Lately we had the very media friendly case of the man accused of taking a coffin to his house in order to use it to threaten his wife.
Surely, the reporting of a court case does not become a “feast day” solely when someone feels threatened by it, particularly, if I may add, when that someone has a record of commenting on similar cases on a very regular basis (just ask the Gozitans) – and that without going into whether the subject of the court report is a “public” or “private” person.
Crossing the line
You ask if Daphne is crossing a line. I think you need to be more specific Father Joe. Is she crossing a line? By uncovering a potential rot in the judicial (and political by proxy) system I don’t think she is crossing any line. I think that should she substantiate any of the allegations she has made about issues (or events or circumstances) that may have affected the performance of the judiciary then she has performed a service and is crossing no line.
Is she crossing a line by opting for the rabble voyeur jury rather than the proper forums? Definitely. The line was crossed the day the public service became subservient to public humiliation. The reason the law exists is so that the proper punishments are meted out as agreed to by society. If Daphne, or anyone else for that matter, is unhappy with the judicial remedies then he or she should be striving to get the appropriate authorities (legislative) to revise the laws. Somehow I think Anna Mallia got it right when she said that Daphne has lost faith in the institutions – that does not however make Daphne’s virtual public lynching of personalities any better.
Petition my Bluff
You see, Father Joe, I believe that we must bear in mind that although there are very serious allegations in question, what happened on the blog in question was a general tornado of muck-raking. The “muck” jury found people guilty for being present at parties. We got spin-off gossip of the low degree based on the by now trendy denominator of “Taste”. The wheat could not be separated from the chaff once the dirt machine got spinning. The good thing is that it appears that both the Justice Minister and the Chief Justice are now in possession of what is necessary to take the required action.
Incidentally, I believe that we must look at the “petition the Chief Justice” issue for a moment as a prime example of the dangers of action outside the proper fora. For 14 days, Daphne was quite happy with the idea that her readers believed her to be petitioning the Chief Justice to switch the sitting magistrate in the libel cases. For 14 days there was no denial of any sort – or at least an acknowledgement that this course of petitioning was not only not being followed but absolutely impracticable at law.
For 14 days, as you rightly said, the “informed public” – whoever read what there was to read – could not be blamed for assuming that the petition went ahead. Not only that, but on 14th February, Daphne once again refers to the possibility of petitioning the Chief Justice (case before Magistrate Micallef Trigona this time). Until 15th February, when the Chief Justice did the right thing (not that I am going to be the one to tell Chief Justice Degaetano what the right thing is) and dismissed the “petition” issue as nonsense, Daphne seemed to have been as comfortable as the MaltaToday reporters with the idea of a petition.
That, you see, is the problem with these open courts. In times of revolutions the people are called upon to form makeshift courts. I like to think that the judicial system might have its rotten apples but is still fully workable and that there are people like our Chief Justice who are there to ensure that the law is applied. Leaving readers with the impression that some “petition” could be effective is not only misleading but also uneducational.
Public v Private
As for “public persons” and “public interest”, I believe that these are the sort of definitions that the law is more than capable of elaborating upon. The jurisprudence of hundreds of years will not simply change because the medium is different. Let the law do its work. As for the wider press, it is true that their main guide as to what is permissible is the very same jurisprudence, but it is also true that they have a (I would add) moral duty as the fourth estate to trigger investigation.
I don’t think anyone is questioning the “scoops” or the need for them to be investigated when it comes to the judiciary and its behaviour. What has been questioned was the use of the information and allegations beyond what was necessary for the public to know. Plategate began as a vendetta. We have asked for weeks: Why now? That is the essence of the error made. Why now and not before?
As for Daphne’s definition of what is a public person I can only say that I am surprised. When a fellow blogger asked her to remove a disparaging comment against me on her blog her reply was “If he can dish it out, he can take it”. When I signalled the lack of observance of netiquette on her blog, I was told in no uncertain terms what I could do with it. I could end by saying it only goes to show, but it actually does not. All it shows is Daphne’s attitude to net ethics. I believe that the issue of public v private remains grounded in the issue of relevance. In the case of the magistrate the measure remains, in my view, whether any of her actions in private or public can compromise her fulfilment of her public function.
Are private people guaranteed privacy when attending public events? I’d say that even public people deserve protection in such cases. Again it is a question of relevance. Even if a person who in other situations could be considered public – let us say a DJ or a local councillor was present at a party – then, unless his actions or behaviour was such as to be important to substantiate the allegations being made, he or she still has a right to privacy. Otherwise what we end up having is a ridiculous exercise of guilt by association – the same kind as the last PN “zokk u fergha campaign”.
Where’s Everybody
Lastly, you ask some rhetorical questions about Facebook and its use. Unfortunately for many people, they have not grasped the basic concept of the public effects of their participation on some networks. Unfortunately for many others, there is little appreciation of the positive potential such tools can have when harnessed to good use.
The Maltese facebook corner shrunk for a while during the past three weeks. People went through a period of self-censorship after it dawned on them that certain information could have dire consequences if it falls in the wrong hands. Yes, I said in the wrong hands. It’s no use raining on the FaceBook parade – FaceBook is the now (possibly the tomorrow but my guess is it will be superseded by something better and hopefully without Farmville). The “wrong hands” are those who collect information and then take innocuous photos of people relaxing and letting their hair down on holiday and then post them online and out of context. If you are in doubt, the rule now is to play safe.
Chief Justice DeGaetano has announced a step in the right direction. The judiciary has no place on FaceBook (without sounding too presumptuous I think they should have figured it out for themselves without the need of a code of ethics). Other uses are not so clear-cut. The “Use of FaceBook” discussion merits an article of its own so I will stop that here – I will only add one thing. Like everything else on the net, FaceBook is only a tool – don’t blame the tool when things go wrong: blame the user.
The Guild of the Dumb
Father Joe, these are but a few reflections in response to your ‘provocation’. You spoke of an “ungilded silence” in the mainstream media. A kernel version of this article had already generated a discussion on J’accuse by Thursday night. My feeling is that many people are prepared to talk once the virtual bullying and loud noises settle down. It’s an important discussion on which the maturity of a nation depends. I don’t sense an ungilded silence. It’s more of a muffled response for now.
I like to think, if you pardon my pun, that people are not so dumb.
This article and accompanying Bertoon appear in today’s edition of The Malta Independent on Sunday
