It’s been a while since J’accuse took a look at the what the world around us has to offer. Facebook killed the blogging star (oh-uh-oh) and the blogosphere is a tad bit less self-referential nowadays. At least less than it was eight years back when linking to other blogs was de rigeur. I was prompted to put up this little post by a newsletter from Patrick updating me with the news on his blog Passejn. Consider this a random reminder that there are others out there doing wonderful things with this tool they call the net.
* The above list is not exclusively a blog list. Marisa illustrates, Schlock is a collaborative project and Toni’s MMI is an institution. Also, I’ve heard rumours that the much loved Bollettino della Sfi*a is about to be revived. Don’t believe the hype, it’s a sequel.
The 12th of March is the World day against cyber censorship. The tools of the digital age have thrown back the frontiers of darkness and ignorance that have previously been used to keep whole populations in check. Reporters Without Borders and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are two organisations that are active in the ongoing battle for freedom of information particularly in the battle against the use and abuse of laws to silence or block the digital (cyber) modes of expression. The Arab Spring and the continuous struggle in China both prove that digital activism can be effective especially in countries where the freedom of expression is a luxury. You may be familiar, for example, with the work of Yoani Sanchez – the Cuban dissident blogger who has become a symbol of freedom of expression in a country that was obsessed with control of information.
It is not just the standard totalitarian regimes who have trouble with information. Even the healthiest of democracies might suffer bouts of allergic intolerance to the independent minded expression of ideas. Again, a combination of ignorance that is nurtured by the establishment and abuse of freedoms based on a misunderstanding of their value would contribute to the fouling of an atmosphere of open expression and intellectual engagement.
On a more local level the recent events on the day of silence might be misconstrued as a formal attempt to gag the new participants in the social discourse. That would be mistaken. The rule of silence (or reflection) might be an archaic rule but is a law of the land just the same. It is not a blanket censorship that exists eternally but a particular moment of silence imposed with what might be a misguided motivation but is a rational motivation just the same. Whether or not the day of silence can still serve its purpose in the digital age of facebook and twitter (or whether it should be extended to such means) is not really a matter of censorship with political ends but really a obvious example of a law that needs updating to take into consideration the modern circumstances. This is all the more necessary in the absence of objective interpretations that could per se have sufficed to fill such a lacuna.
A dangerous situation is created when rules such as the rule of reflection are abused of by parts of the political establishment in order to make whatever political capital they might deem fit. Such a danger is aggravated if members of the executive forces (whose duty it is to protect and serve) and members of the fourth estate (journalists whose duty would be to objectively investigate) become witting or unwitting co-conspirators in such an abuse of the legal provisions.
On this World Day Against Cyber Censorship J’accuse would like to reiterate a fundamental disagreement with the current laws affecting expression during election campaigns in Malta. This includes the rules appertaining to silence on the day before and on the day of elections, the rules covering the “balancing of opinions” on public broadcasting, the rules regulating the funding of political party campaigns and the lack of rules (or lack of application thereof) covering the blatant abuse and violation of digital rights with regards to the collection and reuse of personal digital data.
Happy World Day Against Cyber Censorship.
Blog… and be damned!
(illustration is an adaptation of the Reporters Without Frontiers cover to their report on Cyber Censorship)
(PN) It’s over for GonziPN – or so seems to be the general opinion in the punditry pages. Following Gonzi’s landslide victory in the one-man race poll (96.6%) we are seeing a definite shift away from the one-man monolith that was victorious last election and a contemporaneous effort to re-establish roots among the electorate. Which leaves us with a number of conclusions and concerns.
First of all insofar as the business of governance is concerned, the PN General Council vote has not changed much. Even with a repentant Debono returning into the fold (his idea of repentance being that he believes he was proved right) the lasting impression is of a party that will go to any lengths to survive a full term in power. The dissidents within the fold excluded themselves from the 96%, mostly by abstaining. Meanwhile the “papabili” such as De Marco or Busuttil rallied behind the leader.
The PN remains a fragmented party in search of a definition. The signs coming from the minor tussles in Local Council campaigns are not positive. The fragility of the very fabric that should be keeping the party together is evident with its dealings with past and prospective candidates. There is however a silent larger picture with the usual suspects seeming to prefer a “silenzio stampa” to the noise we had become accustomed to.
Might there be a new strategy in the making? Is the transition back from GonziPN to PN a superficial diversion from deeper moves that might bring about a timely resetting of the PN modus operandi? Above all, are we dealing here with the proverbial “too little, too late”?
J’accuse vote: Brownian Motion.
(PL) Not much to be added here. The PL’s only consistency is its constant assault on the weak points of governance. The strategy of blaming every ill -imagined or real – on “GonziPN” is combined with procedural and psychological pressures to push a teetering government off the seat of power.
The prolonged lifeline of the current government might soon turn out to be the PL’s weakness. While Joseph gleefully repeats the “iggranfat mas-siggu tal-poter” mantra he fails to appreciate that the longer he is prancing about as the “prattikament Prim Ministru” the more he will actually set people wondering whether he has what it takes to carry out the job. How long they will be happy with his evasive answers as to actual plans might be anybodies guess but it might soon be time to stop taking bets.
J’accuse vote: Hooke’s Law.
(AD) Like the football team intent on surviving the drop AD can only plan its strategy step by step. Don’t blame the outfit for concentrating on the Local Council elections for now, General Elections can wait. AD may be short of manpower but they could have been greedy and fielded more candidates irrespective of their quality in areas such as Sliema where they could expect a huge backlash at the outgoing council’s farce. Instead AD are content to field their single version of a “heavyweight” with party chairman Briguglio.
Don’t expect many people to look at AD’s manifesto, which is a pity. The most the small party can hope is to get some mileage and exposure that could serve as a platform for an assault on the impossible come the next General Election.
J’accuse vote: Small Hadron Collider.
(Blogs) They’re not a political party but they’re evolving too. We are in a positive boom phase with more blogs than you could care to count (or read in a day). That is definitely positive. Expect to find more of the short-lived instruments – the lunga manu of party propaganda. Expect to be surprised that notwithstanding what is now a long internet presence (at least five years of growing internet readership) we will find that users (mostly readers) have trouble coming to terms with the immediacy and interactivity of the net. Most importantly the ability of your average voter to use his meninges to sieve through the information shot in his direction is about to be severely tested. J’accuse vote : Blog and be damned.
Julia Farrugia’s “rapping” at the hands of the Press Ethics Commission (PEC) has brought the question of journalistic ethics back to the discussion arena. J’accuse has long taken the subject of journalistic ethics to heart – particularly within the context of the growth of the role of blogs and blog content in the public sphere. For some time now we have been mourning the death of investigative journalism in Malta and it has little to do with who is carrying the scythe.
In true fishpond fashion, the post-mortem analysis of the Julia Farrugia/Joseph Mizzi has been absorbed into the mainstream manner of journalism: where beyond the news item lies an opportunity to snipe at people and milk the possibility to sling mud as far as possible. This analysis of ours has nothing to do with our being faint-hearted or timid about the need to call a spade a spade. J’accuse has no claims to purity or perfection (though we do get damn close).
What we would like to see discussed is whether Julia Farrugia failed on the count of exercising journalistic discretion when faced with a possible story. In the case of that kind of examination we find that our judgement falls closer to that found on Lou Bondi’s or Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blogs than on the explanation afforded by MaltaToday journalist Matthew Vella. At the moment of receiving the information and video, Farrugia was duty bound to apply an ethical brake to the eagerness to publish a juicy video.
Matthew Vella tries to find fault with the PEC’s reasoning. In particular Vella does not agree with what he reads as a shift of moral responsibility: “it was not incumbent upon the journalist to take moral umbrage at the source’s footage. That would have been tantamount to self-censorship, on the basis of the assumed deference towards government appointees.” We may grant that the standard being applied by the PEC may not find universal acceptance (or cause difficulties in future application) – but that would be focusing on a separate problem. The focus here was on a journalist’s judgement and ethical considerations when evaluating “news value”.
Vella asks: “So does this mean from now on, when we encounter some form of embarrassing or unbecoming behaviour by a government minister or high-ranking civil servant, they should not be held to account, simply because they ridicule themselves?” I don’t think anybody would agree that this is the conclusion to be drawn. Let’s put it this way, had Julia Farrugia’s news item limited itself to reporting the fact that Mr Mizzi was filmed in a groggy state we might not be here asking questions. Instead the implications loaded behind the video, its suspect editing and the forcefulness with which it was used to bring about a political statement and result, shift it away from plain reporting and into the hazy domain of journalism driven by preconceived agendas – in which case it stops being journalism. It becomes biased reporting where “facts” are cut and paste to suit a journalist’s agenda.
Which brings me to the Daphnes and the Lous of this world. Lou Bondi has recntly taken to blogging and no longer considers the blogging world as a world of “peċluqa” (see video below) – either that or he has become one hell of a “peċluq” himself. His last two posts at the time of writing (“Julia, try a red bathing suit this time” and “When Julia went crying to daddy“) are redolent of the style perfected on the Runs (there goes the obsession). Malta’s foremost investigative journalist does not limit himself to discussing the ethical issue at stake but performs his own little foray into the world of character assassinations and guilt by association.
Daphne too chooses to deviate from the real issue and peppers her commentary with references to “il-boton” – the usual snide, taste-based, zokk u fergħa reasoning best left for PLPN bull towards the election. This is a pity really because there is no doubt that Caruana Galizia has accumulated enough expertise and networking to have the right sources and means to fill the gap that exists in investigative journalism in Malta. Instead she participates happily in fishpond peċlieq with gay abandon.
Yes, we know we can expect the tirade on J’accuse from this magnificent duo of Maltese journalistic standards but hey what’s new? Plategate may long be buried in the collective memory and might be down to the final stanzas of what has been a drawn out lament but the lessons to be learnt are still there in full view of anyone who cares to listen. Last time round – back in the heyday of Plategate – we held Lou to task for his apparent inability to assemble a proper program investigating the causes behind Plategate and the conflagration that ensued. Like Julia Farrugia, Daphne had sat on some juicy and important bits of news regarding the behaviour of members of our judiciary and their extended circles. Like Julia she had a decision on whether to go public or not. That was her moment of applying journalistic ethics.
Lou failed to ask Daphne (his dinner friend) the vital question: Why now? (as in Why then?). Julia Farrugia deserves the rapping on the knuckles for her lack of judgement in the Mizzi Affair. Daphne Caruana Galizia would still have us believe that the flush of information regarding the private lives of public individuals was triggered off by a sudden urge of public duty notwithstanding the fact that she had sat on that information (and accumulated it in true peċluqa style) for quite some time. Why did she choose the moment she chose to suddenly publish the information? Lou tried his damn best to depict Daphne as the hero and martyr when making his editorial choices for the infamous Bondiplus programme.
In J’accuse’s book the press should be reporting instances of public individuals who are caught misbehaving while on public duty. It should be uncovering these situations of public officers behaving badly and should continue to press on to ensure the transparency of such information.
What should never be done is to use such information in line with a private agenda of spite, hate, jealousy and retribution. Unfortunately it seems that Malta’s fishpond journalism is more and more prone to pick up the latter style than engage in real investigation and reporting.
So much for ethics then. Take that from Malta’s longest running peċluq.
We may be working on slow mode thanks to the big move out of Lux City but that does not mean we have no time to note the big changes* in the Maltese Net World. The Times has chosen to wait for 11 days after the 1st of April to launch its spanking new online look. Thank the man in the sky for that otherwise we’d have suspected this was somebody trying to pull off another of those sophisticated pranks.
So here’s the new Times website lads… nothing more than a standard blog set up for 2011. Is that all they can do? Really? With all the resources at hand? I wonder who’s getting paid for this odd job… some lazy mutt with not much to think of beyond filching off standard templates that can be found on the net at the modicum price (prezz modiku) of 75$ (and that’s when you REALLY want to spend).
One of the greatest drawbacks of the new format will be that the ugly mutts of Bocca & Co will permanently feature at the bottom of the page like some eerie footnote.
Welcome to the Times 2011. It’s like J’accuse 2009… but darker….
You already know what we think of Bondi and Bondi+. But we’re a blog – a particularly difficult customer in the market of public opinion. We pronounced the death of investigative journalism quite some time ago and we never got a reply to the many questions we posed to Lou and his programme guest. But we’re a blog. We are but one opinion in a world of different opinions.
We may have a boringly irrelevant opinion and we may attract a few commentators (not bloggers Lou, not bloggers) that reflect even more opinions yet we are out there – to be read, agreed with or disagreed with. We too create our ripples in public opinion. And sometimes those ripples can be irritating. Irritating to the point that both blogger and commentators can be seen as “paċlieqa” – troublesome chatters that threaten the order of things. (video clip available further down).
Last Tuesday the sans-pareil of Maltese journalism had a programme about the environmental effects of the Delimara project. At one point in the programme he had a little battibecco with Leo Brincat when Leo dared to suggest that it is not only the experts who do not like the government plans but that there is also a strong wave of negative public opinion. At that point Lou Bondi – having earlier dismissed the importance of public opinion in such technical matters – feels threatened and interrupts on one of his classical “points of order”.
Lou is not against public opinion but against public opinion being the measure on technical issues. He throws in a stab at blogs and bloggers “ipeċilqu fuq il-blogs” – an indeterminate verb that is an attempt at superior disdain that backfires. You see Lou’s problem here is that he loses the plot quickly. Very quickly. On the one hand the whole spirit of his program is supposed to be that of an information exercise and the clients of such an exercise are the general public. Presumably they are being provided with facts with which to form an opinion – either that or this is pure entertainment and majtezwel have the bearded lady and a few elephants on the show.
The greater order of things however require that Lou is the arbiter of what is relevant (and definitely not the public). How wrong can he be? The public do not get to choose what is the right machinery – we are not all Profs Edward Mallias – but surely the exercise here is to see whether those entrusted with the choosing have done so in a proper manner and with the public good in mind. That is the relevance of the wave of public opinion that Leo Brincat rightly mentioned. It even goes beyond the NGO‘s.
Public opinion, according to Lou, is not relevant in technical matters. We should assume of course that Lawrence Gonzi‘s place of abode and the distance in meters from the San Antnin processing plant and from Delimara is of some obscure technical relevance only graspable by the likes of Lou. By his reasoning we should not really vote unless we grasp the full (technical) consequences of the decisions that our elected representatives will take – all the decisions.
Moving away from the issue of whether public opinion is or is not relevant in such a discussion, Lou’s blatant disregard of his very clients – the thousands supposed to be watching his every programme (why? not to have an opinion since it is irrelevant – so presumably to drool over his immense capability to orchestrate the stage) is shaming. Where’s Everybody has an English slogan: Programmes People Watch. They really should put a question mark at the end of that statement. Or simply add – Programmes People Watch – and hell if we know why.
Fast forward to proceedings before the Broadcasting Authority and Lou has a damascene moment – he is suddenly all for the public pulse and what they are thinking. Defending his cause for the right to have Norman Lowell on his programme he whips out a very technical criterion:
However, Mr Bondì claimed that, although there was a lot of feedback about the programme, he spoke to all those who felt offended and they later understood the producers’ reasoning that such ideas had to be exposed and challenged. He said Mr Lowell’s popularity had increased over the past years and he garnered almost 4,000 votes in the last election. This was partly because he was only allowed to appear on television without anyone rebutting his claims. This meant there was a public interest motivation in making people realise how dangerous Mr Lowell’s arguments were.
Funny. Leo Brincat (who is also guilty of throwing bloggers into the bipartisan basket – “bloggers taz-zewg nahat”) had simply stated that public opinion should also be important when measuring whether the government was being considered as the right administrator for the awarding of contracts. Lou was quick to dismiss that with a trademark non sequiturand leapt at the opportunity to side-jab the fora he has avoided to face time and time again.
Paċlieqa he says. Programs Paċlieqa Watch. Quite fitting I guess.
Here’s the clip of the relevant parts… and the useless song at the end.
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