Tag: media

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Mediawatch Values

The Truth when Lies are Paid for

Way back in 2005 I chose the slogan “the truth, if I lie” (la vérité si je mens) for this blog. The truth is an important aspect whether we are talking about reporting or opinion forming. Facts and the truth should be the basis of assessment in a normal democracy. We all know by now that in this age of post-truth this has changed:

“We have entered a new phase of political and intellectual combat, in which democratic orthodoxies and institutions are being shaken to their foundations by a wave of ugly populism. Rationality is threatened by emotion, diversity by nativism, liberty by a drift towards autocracy. More than ever, the practice of politics is perceived as a zero-sum game, rather than a contest between ideas. […] At the heart of this global trend is a crash in the value of truth, comparable to the collapse of a currency or a stock.” (Matthew D’Ancona, Post Truth, The new war on truth and how to fight back).

One manifestation of the manipulation of truth is the increasing use of space on mainstream media for paid propagation of information. Large chunks of public money are used to buy space on media to sell statements in an effort to turn them into universally accepted truths. More often than not the use of “statistics” is facilitated by the virtual disappearance of any proper watchdog and by the building of walls of silence that laugh in the face of the transparency that should be reinforcing the veracity of such statements.

Take the “record unemployment” figures that this government loves to flaunt. Behind such figures lie so many half-truths buried in statistical convolutions such as the reformed unemployment scheme that ensures that people vanish off the lists much before they enter gainful employment, such as the obvious reliance on a bloated civil service to take on more “jobs for the boys”. That same record unemployment was behind the use of the power of incumbency in the last election where famously Gozitan entrepreneurs and SME’s and employers in the entertainment industry found themselves short of staff simply because the government did the magic absorbing trick of vanishing their employees away into the civil service.

But there is another equally worrying trend. The government has found ways to buy “authenticity” by purchasing its way onto spaces in the media that could deceivingly be passed away as independent reporting. In the beginning it was close collaboration with houses like The Economist hosting talks in Malta packed full of government spokespersons and ministers. The Economist would be happy to lend its name to a national government paying its way into its discussion space. Two “The World in XXX” events plus one “Mediterranean Leadership Summit” were thus organised by the Economist in Malta at the Hilton Portomaso. The Mediterranean Leadership Summit, held in 2016, included Henley and Partners as its Gold Sponsor (we all know who these are), the Libyan Investment Authority as its Silver Sponsor (notwithstanding the fact that the LIA had had its assets frozen by the UN since 2011), and Finance Malta and Maltco lotteries as contributors.

It is not just events though. Articles can now be bought. Yes, you read that right. Articles on major international news portals can actually be “paid content”. Thus, the CNN article doing the rounds about Malta being one of the Top 15 country destinations for Christmas was apparently yet another paid article. Here are Andrew and Paul Caruana Galizia calling out another paid report, this time one that appeared on the Guardian:

Do not underestimate the government use of paid social media ads and posts (such as facebook campaigns). As time goes by, the Facebook algorithms are fine tuned to push to the top of your screens any paid information. While you scroll through the online papers and you see repeat adverts also paid for by government to promote its spin remember that. The campaign to disinform is much stronger than you think. The solution is to be vigilant and call out whenever you can.

Finally do not let the irony escape you that these lies and half-truths are funded by YOUR money. You are actually paying taxes that are then used to sell you untruths.

It’s a liars’ world out there. The truth, if I lie.

Categories
Rule of Law

THE GOVERNMENT LIES – a look into government spin in the aftermath of Daphne’s assassination

In this first of a series of posts, JOE BLOGGS (a pseudonym) takes a close, hard look at the evolution of government spin in the aftermath of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia. This did not start on October 16th. Read on…

Speed is essential.

As we have heard many experts say, the first 24 hours after a crime are key to secure evidence at the crime scene and avoid contamination. Secure the area swiftly and efficiently, bring in forensics and interview eye-witnesses. The time taken to do that is inversely proportional to the likelihood of apprehending the offender.

Much like in the Egrant case just 5 months ago, we are well aware that this did not happen in the case of Daphne Caruana Galizia’s cold erasure by car bomb on Monday. It would be interesting to know how long it took the Malta Police to secure evidence in each of the prior 10 car bombs since this government took office in 2013, half of which happened under the present Police Commissioner’s 1 year watch alone. Whether this latest failure to act swiftly is down to sheer incompetence or worse, reluctance, will undoubtedly be the subject of continued debate. There will also be cries for responsibility to be borne and faith restored in the soon to be renamed ‘Malta Police Farce’.

However, this narrative is not about that.

This narrative is about the insensitivity of a Prime Minister and his government (and the Labour Party, like many things in Malta, the line got blurred) obsessed with PR, spin and its “greater plans”. So obsessed, in fact, that the public execution of a journalist, one of its most vociferous and effective critics, gets treated coldly. To them, this is a mere PR crisis and they are proceeding to manage that “crisis” with clinical precision and efficiency.

Much like the situation was “managed” when politicians in government were proverbially caught with their trousers down in the ICIJ’s Panama Papers (they are all still very much in office after what can at best be described as a brushing off) and myriad other scandals that, in any other reality, would have ended political careers. Not here.

Man is an apex predator, not because we are particularly big or have sharp teeth or claws but, besides our inventiveness, we are designed to run for far longer than quicker prey. We tire them out. Then, when exhausted and their stride slows, we can isolate them from the herd, encircle them and strike.

This game plan works outside the Savannah and can be applied to scandals, calls for resignation and critics too. You just need to take some measures, batten down the hatches and wait out the news cycle.

Manage the immediate aftermath swiftly, dilute the news, point fingers and attack the messenger if you must, spread seeds of doubt and up the freebies, divide and, if you can wait out the reaction, people will eventually tire and lose interest. People move on, they accept compromises, they forget. This is only set to get worse as younger generations with ever less will or patience to read replace those that do (votes for 16 year olds just speeds up the process). The cycles are getting shorter and, on longer term or macro issues, less intense.

This narrative focuses on the PR crisis management exercise and explains its elements. There is a lot of background and much darker sides to this story which must be told, which is why what started off as a post needed to be broken up and will likely have to become a serial. The trick is to know where to look. The government is PR savvy and has advisors (including Trump advisors and their tools of the trade) on tap, so even if the soulless felt no sadness, surely they will have been told that on a week of national mourning, flags should fly half mast. They did outside Malta including in Brussels but those on government buildings, including Parliament, did not budge an inch and in all likelihood they will not. If you have not realised or questioned, I invite you to ask yourself why this is. Similarly, during a silent protest by Maltese journalists in Valletta on Thursday, whilst journalists were placing placards about freedom of expression and laying flowers on her impromptu shrine, one person strategically and slyly tossed a copy of L-Orizzont on the far left and slipped away. Although the cover of that edition bore a headline claiming that Muscat would leave no stone unturned to find her killers, the knowledge that that same newspaper called for her cleansing just months earlier and the absolute detest that Daphne had for that propaganda outlet may have escaped many. This was the journalistic equivalent of taking a dump on her grave. The offensive rag thankfully disappeared by Friday evening.

Daphne Caruana Galizia’s death comes at a convenient time.

Like gazelles running for our lives on the scorched desert plains slowly drifting apart from what was left of our herd, we are exhausted and broken in. Resigned to our sad fate.

The 2017 snap election was designed to be a charge of the light brigade. The net result was effectively the smoking out any remaining dissenters (ponder here for a minute as to why a government that knows it still has a huge majority acted as though the opposition stood a chance) and “shock and awe” the others into the silence of acceptance and helplessness. Again, compromises. The snap election victory was followed by a farcical debate in the European Parliament on the state of the rule of law in Malta where the government quite happily paraded its LGBTI and civil right friendly laws to pinkwash its abysmal record in good governance and human rights. It also mentioned its much vaunted two gimmick laws, the removal of prescription on crimes of corruption for politicians (tiny tip, it does not apply to Chiefs of Staff and other cronies or to other crimes such as money laundering) and the so-called Protection of the Whistleblower Act (a law already pending in Parliament neutered through the inclusion and need for official recognition as a whistleblower by politicians and by ensuring that reporting lines for corruption by and large lead straight to politicians). The PANA committee was just ignored and its legitimacy questioned. Locally, the great “don’t attack Malta or dirty our name with foreigners since we need their business” line was peddled (think of the scope, timing and effects of MaltaFiles) and bought readily. Omertà by any other name.

The official line also peddled was that the Opposition’s and Civil Society activists’ criticism of corruption was “negative”, “had no proof” and full of “hate” whilst the government’s winning campaign was “positive” (we will talk about subliminal messages later as we stray into the fascinating realm of commercialised PSY-Ops). Awash with cash from multi-million deals shrouded in secrecy with the Azeri and Chinese governments as well as from closely guarded golden passport and VISA schemes, the government promised that the best times for this country are ahead of us, we just need to put up with a little scandal or hiccup here and there but do not criticise us because that is negative.

A couple of editorials in that Labour newspaper (L-Orizzont) called for the cleansing of negativity and the journalists that spread it including the late Daphne Caruana Galizia so that the government may continue with its grand plan. The official line in relation to those editorials was condemnation but yet mere weeks later that editor joined the hordes of Labour journalists and media relations people employed since 2013 with an unspecified job at the Office of the Prime Minister undoubtedly involved in propaganda, likely with the Department of (mis)Information.

A whistleblower who was never acknowledged as one and who was effectively ridiculed and branded as a liar, thief and Russian whore by the government machinery (a magistrate’s comments left much to be desired too), rightly fled. The guns turned on the Opposition leader, Simon Busuttil (negative) who was also subjected to ridicule in the press by government officials parading as opinion columns.

A new opposition leader, whom Daphne also criticised for his baggage (one cannot rally behind a leader to clean up this sorry state if his background and baggage does not inspire faith), stepped out of the side-lines and riding on a wave of “positivity” swept up the party vote. The reason for this victory and the resulting attacks on Daphne by those who just months earlier egged her on, was negativity and criticising corruption does not appeal to the majority so we must compromise. A new normal, just one or two notches lower.

Journalists were replaced or fell quiet and new opinion columns by officials within the Office of the Prime Minister popped up boasting about this country’s prosperity and deriding negativity. The eunuch press slipped back into its habit of cutting and pasting from government press statements, never questioning or digging.

Then the news disappeared. Under the threat of financial ruin and likely political pressure, articles screaming about money laundering, kickbacks and Azeris through the bank where the whistleblower worked (Pilatus Bank) disappeared or were amended without so much of a note. What would have caused uproar in a normal country, caused little more than a whimper. A blog post about Franco Debono’s polo shirt and the size of the logo got more of a reaction than one reminding people of the gravity of an Orwellian situation that permits the erasure of the historical record.

On 9 October, 2017, the government unveiled its budget for 2018 branded as the first ever budget without new taxes. A surplus budget. Malta is rolling in dosh from the sale of passports to Chinese, sheiks and Russians at Euro 1m a pop and the best days for our country are just around the corner. We will create a new authority entrusted with doing up all of Malta’s roads (funded by passports), explore a national blockchain strategy (CryptoRubble springs to mind), build like there’s no tomorrow and generally make hay.

Daphne’s last post, a silent scream about the dire situation where the Chief of Staff and head of anything strategically important, Keith Schembri, who rode out the many scandals including Panama Papers in which he was not only implicated but appears to have master-minded, is continuing with a defamation court case against the ex-opposition leader for daring to call him corrupt, defied her views on the news cycle. Isolated and frustrated she exclaimed about the dire situation. Were it not for the explosion that finally ended her Running Commentary just 30 minutes later, that post would have had at most double digit shares, a few daring comments by people under pseudonyms and some more praising her for giving the Opposition leader, Adrian Delia, a break. Then the 11th car bomb went off in a quiet country lane on a day when one of the subjects of Daphne’s most harsh criticism was on roster duty as inquiring magistrate, the fifth anniversary of the forced resignation of another who called her his nemesis and just 3 days away from the 38th anniversary of another Black Monday.

That is the backdrop. Make no mistake, the ship that is the national psyche has been listing for a while. We need to acknowledge that, though we recently refurbished it with ebony planks and sterling silver nails, the deck is almost vertical before we even attempt to right this ship. If you are reading this from Malta then you likely went to today’s demonstration, likely jeered and shouted for freedom of expression and the protection of journalists but just days before Monday 16 October, 2017 I bet that you were wondering whether it may be worth taking down an old facebook post or cover photo talking about corruption lest it damage chances of some crumbs or favour.

I should get back to the immediate reaction but will have to tackle that in the next part along with a wider look at how we got here. Until then maybe watch Black Mirror and wonder why, if this is not a political assassination, magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera’s first and only act before accepting to recuse herself from this investigation summoned what distinctly looks like a gang.

 

Categories
Watermarks

Watermarks: Walking on Water

Watermarks

Watergate

I re-watched “All the President’s Men” yesterday. It’s a 1976 movie featuring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffmann and it chronicles the work of Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein that led to the uncovering of the Watergate Scandal and the eventual resignation of President Nixon. The facts surrounding Watergate happened in the early seventies – a time without the mass means of communication and information that we know of today. Journalistic investigation was painstakingly slow and when the main whistleblower “Deep Throat” speaks in riddles there is much digging for information to be done.

Watergate was all about a money trail. Nixon and his party were using huge slush funds from the GOP campaign to finance covert operations intended to sabotage the Democrat campaign. There was no sudden discovery of all the information. It all started with what seemed to be a simple burglary at the Watergate complex and it was only thanks to the dogged work of the two journalists against all odds that the whole extent of the scandal was uncovered.

When the Post decided to run with the first big title linking big heads in government to the corruption trail, the official response was big and could be summed up in one word: denial. Nixon’s spokesperson attacked the journalists and the entity they worked for and came up with the phrase “shoddy journalism” and “shabby journalism”. Nixon’s people implied that there was a misreading of facts and that the Post had an ulterior political motive for “fabricating” such information.

All Nixon’s men did was gain some more time. They used that time to abuse their positions in power to try to harass anybody who was on their trail and close to obtaining damning information. Astonishingly Nixon won an election when the scandal had only just broke – but not so astonishingly at that point the pieces of the puzzle were far from Nixon and it was hard for the man in the street to make the connection. As more evidence was compiled – mostly by “following the money trail” – Nixon’s position became untenable.

All through the scandal that dragged on for two years, Nixon’s behaviour smacked of abuse of power and disrespect of institutional authority. At one point Nixon ordered the Attorney General (Richardson) and his deputy (Ruckelshaus) to sack special prosecutor Cox. Neither of the two accepted such a blatant abuse and both resigned in protest. Nixon only managed to get what he wanted when he found an appeasing Attorney General in Bork. Responding to members of the press for this Nixon stated emphatically “I am not a crook”.

Walking on Water

Events closer to home are uncannily similar to what happened in the Nixon days. We have a musical chairs of police commissioners who hesitate to prosecute when it is blindingly obvious that there is matter sufficient for prosecution. We have a government machinery that functions on blanket, unfounded denial and that resorts to bullying tactics when it comes to investigative journalists doing their job. Yesterday we had a Minister without portfolio mimicking Nixon’s spokesperson accusing journalists of not knowing how to read and of being “malicious”.

Every day is bringing to light more damning information linking more and more dots in a scandal that knows no equal in Maltese history. The Prime Minister and the two persons directly involved in the story choose to bury their heads in the sand and cling onto power hoping for a miracle of the walk on water kind. Apparently these scandals are not enough because some still claim that Malta is “economically strong”. I seriously believe it is only a matter of time that this fabrication of statistics falls apart – especially in the light of the fact that the greatest supposed economic injections under this government are tainted and linked with the scandalous events of Panamagate.

Muscat prefers to drag Malta through scandal after scandal rather than bear the responsibility and act in the interests of the nation. Like Nixon he believes that he will not “resign a position that he was elected to fill”. Like Nixon he prefers to use his incumbency in his favour so long as it is possible – thus protracting the agony of an electorate in need of clarity and honest politics.

One day, in the not too distant future, Muscat might face a journalist like Frost who when asked by Nixon “what would you have done” replied:

One is: there was probably more than mistakes; there was wrongdoing, whether it was a crime or not; yes it may have been a crime too. Second: I did – and I’m saying this without questioning the motives – I did abuse the power I had as president, or not fulfil the totality of the oath of office. And third: I put the American people through two years of needless agony and I apologise for that.

Watermarks is a new series on J’accuse. The idea consists in having a morning “short” taking a quick look  and reflection on current events in the news – what is trending and why.

Categories
Mediawatch

Photosensitive

child_akkuza

Aylan Kurdi’s lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach.The photo was snapped moments before the body was picked up by a Turkish rescue operator. Within hours it became the internationally recognised symbol of the unfolding Syrian tragedy. Not the thousands of persons bandied across borders, not the hundreds of thousands of unwanted finding doors slammed in their faces, not a whole people that has become a European hot potato much to its own chagrin. No.

Just a little boy in a red t-shirt, shorts and shoes. Face down. Arms along his sides. At first glance it is not so much an image of death as one of exhaustion. Before you are struck by the dark reality of the death of an innocent you are first made to think of an exhausted loss of the will to go on. Then it hits you. This is a dead little boy. And this image has struck home in millions of households. It has been described as the ultimate eye-opener, the straw that broke the camel’s back. Did we really need the image of one dead kid set in a romantic position in order to unlock the last shreds of humanity? If so why?

Memory

Last night Rai3 showed the second of a two piece instalment called “Generation War“. The series, originally called “Our Mothers and Our Fathers” in German follows the fate of a group of five young Germans throughout World War II. The German channel ZDF had commissioned the series in order to act as a dialogue between generations. The series attracted huge criticism in Germany since it seemed to portray the Nazis as “others” to the German population but also served as an eye-opener to the great deception that Nazism had been to the young pre-war generation.

Dealing with history is hard enough. Remembrance and knowledge that results from not forgetting are crucial tools in understanding the freedoms and liberties that have been achieved in the last century. Reading abut Generation War I learnt that the first real big eye-opener in Germany with regards to the horror of the holocaust “only” appeared on TV in the form of a mini-series in 1978 (featuring among others a young Meryl Streep).

The media has an important role in shaping ideas about great events. There was no media as we know it at the time of the holocaust or anti-semite pogroms. Most news was state controlled and played to the tune of the dictatorship. More recently we can see the mediatic effect of reporting of mass exodus such as that of the East Germans in  1989. In fact it should not be too hard to remember that not too long ago the pathways of Austria and Hungary were flooded with another people eager to reach the Holy Grail of German free territory. At the time a collapsing East Germany witnessed a haemhorrage of citizens eager to escape the claustrophobic atmosphere behind the iron curtain.

27 years later East Germans are replaced by Syrians. The plight of the people running away from a war torn country had been gathering momentum for over three years now. It took a symbolic snapshot to bring home the reality. Those who had hitherto been numbed by the excessive amount of daily information covering tragedy after tragedy, war after war, displacement after displacement, were suddenly shocked into action.

Aylan was buried back in his tragic hometown of Kobane. The hopes that humanity can once again stir itself out of its egoistic stupor were not buried with him though. Right or wrong, the stolen snapshot of a dead boy’s curls playing with the waves on a turkish beach might have kicked off the tide of compassion and care that had long been lacking.

Categories
Mediawatch

The Plagiarists

We’ve been there before. This will be a useless post – a hopeless one really. In this post I’ll be pointing out that yet another aspiring politician has put his signature to an article that is full of excerpts that are not his own. You might read it if it tickles your fancy, or you might not. Most probably it will draw a few guffaws and some would go through the motions of tut-tutting for a while. The newspaper in question will probably not bother with the fact that its political contributor is a plagiarist. So why bother?

Well, notwithstanding the miasma of indifference that seems to have become the norm and standard for your average citizen I’ve decided to soldier on – go on the record so to speak. These are the men and women that your political parties will be suggesting that you send to Brussels and Strasbourg to represent you. When these men and women sign their articles in the paper and end it with “is an MEP election candidate on the PL ticket” they are basically looking for the Maltese reaction of: “bravu dan”, “ara kemm kiteb dwar l-Ewropa”, “nahseb jifhem”.

The Malta Independent has quite a history in particular of entertaining this kind of “articles” roughly shod together from bits and pieces over the internet. You can spot them a mile away. They normally carry the kind of title that would have been taken straight from an EU poster for some project and then segue into a series of very tenuously related paragraphs. It’s what you get when your “research” is any old Eu-related document that provides you with chunky “technical-sounding” phrases.

So here is il-Perit Clint Camilleri or rather – an article collated together from a document entitled “Dilemmas in Globalization – Exploring Global Trends and Progressive Solutions”. To be fair it’s a collection of essays for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament and Camilleri lifts extensively from Martin Schultz’s intervention. But he does not tell you does he? He just makes the material his own and that is fraudulent. Why is it fraudulent? Because it makes Camilleri appear to be someone who he is not – someone capable of writing an article about Social Europe in a technical manner.

Should that be important to you? Hell, I’ve given up – you decide. It would not surprise me one bit that this kind of “passing off as one’s own” is accepted as normal and ok behaviour. We’ve been rushing headlong down this path of indifference for quite some time now. Our parties have gotten us used to candidates that amount to nothing much more than hot air and pompous parading hiding behind some University degree or other. All the more fools are we when we persist in voting for them.

The text of Camilleri’s article below can be compared to the text in this pdf.

 

Social Europe

Today we are not only living a financial crisis but a crisis in globalization. The crises started in the financial system but have spread to every aspect of the economy, creating socio-economic disequilibrium. In order to save the financial system governments have invested millions of Euros but the problem is not to save only the financial system by restoring credit, but to sort out the huge structural economic problems which are at the origin of the problem. [J’accuse note – Lifted from introduction to document]

The growing inequality worldwide is at the heart of the problem. This is the most important dilemma we must face. We must decide whether we should restore a system that recompenses those that created the financial crises in the first place or transforming the system which will eventually address those at the bottom of the pyramid. [J’accuse note – also lifted from Introduction]

Some statistics of shame: According to the Eurostat, 59,000 Maltese were at risk of poverty – 14.6 % of the population, according to 2008 figures. ‘At risk of poverty’ is defined as meaning those living in a household with a disposable income that is below the risk-of-poverty threshold, which is set at 60% of the national median disposable income.

Eurostat said that in Malta, 16,000 were ‘severely materially deprived’. Such people could not pay rent/mortgage or utility bills, keep their home adequately warm or face unexpected expenses. They also could not afford to eat meat, fish or protein equivalent every second day an cannot afford a car, washing machine, colour TV or telephone.

If national income had been distributed more equal, with lower profits and higher salaries the overall European economy would have been more stable. If the wealth that was speculated had been fairly distributed in the form of lower prices and higher salaries we would have been able to minimise the effects from the crises.

The crises we are suffering is to a great extent the crises of a model based on the growth of inequality. Salaries which are too low and poverty amongst the middle class has driven credit consumption to the exploding point of debt. Thus credit is no longer a socially and extended and economically solvent request used for investment into new fields of real production. [J’accuse note – slightly paraphrased from intro on page 1]

Increased competitive pressures on the social systems threaten to damage the social cohesion of European societies. In face of the highly mobile global economy nation states have lost their capacity to act alone and to adequately protect social rights. While capital has swept away borders through the single market mechanism, the welfare state has remained trapped with national boundaries. For decades the EU success model was the combination of economic progress with social progress. Then the governing conservative majority in Europe decided to focus on the removal of trade barriers while sometimes neglecting the social dimension. [J’accuse note – page 16 of document]

Thinking in a global dimension has become a pre-requisite for finding solutions. Re-thinking governance and including new levels of governance expands the room for manoeuvre. Growing interdependence between societies and nation states does not only create new categories of problems, it offers the solution too. Nation states alone might not be the best vehicle for mitigating huge changes. The EU is much better equipped for finding solutions and implementing concrete measures in cooperation with other major players. [J’accuse note – page 14 of document]

Now is the time to correct this imbalance. It is time for a new social Europe that places people not the market at the centre of economic activity. Social progress clauses need to be included in every piece of EU legislation and social and environmental impact assessments needs to be taken into account. If Europe again shows its social face it will surely regain the trust and the support of its citizens. [J’accuse note – page 16 of document].

Perit Clint Camilleri is an MEP election candidate on the PL ticket

 

 

Categories
Mediawatch Politics

Get them to the Greek

You may or may not have heard the news about the closure (and then reopening) of the national TV station in Greece. The ERT is Hellas’  pride and joy that for many represents the Greek heritage. Samaras’ government had decided to shut the whole business down with the hope of reopening it with a much slimmer and more efficient workforce. In an equivocal decision today a Greek court held that the public broadcaster should not shut its doors after all and should remain operative while the reforms to its loss-making structures take place.

The brave journalists at ERT had continued to broadcast in spite of the order to shut down six days earlier. They also enjoyed expressions of solidarity from around the world – journalists should not be hushed up. The problem with ERT though is also that it is a behemoth – a giant with many lots of wastage. A large part of the monetary hemorrhage that jars badly with the general atmosphere of austerity is the manner with which the two main parties in Greece have used ERT as though it was their own home turf. A number of the 3,000 functionaries within the channel are political appointees and this portion should be the one bearing the brunt of a scaling down in the future.

It’s not only about functionaries though. There’s a corpus of journalists working with the national station and the shutting down of ERT has been seen as an affront to the basic principles of democracy and expression – rightly so. The focus cannot only be on that matter though. The Greek parties’ patronage and abuse of public funds to further their systems of cronyism must also be addressed.

Meanwhile in the Duchy

CSV president Michel Wolter has had to do some explaining after he commented on a case involving a private radio station. The news story in question was about General Prosecutor Robert Biever and the allegation that the Luxembourg secret service SREL had investigated him on suspicion of paedophilia. In a statement made in the Chamber of Deputies Wolter had implied that the station carrying the allegation should reveal its sources. His intervention was interpreted as as an attack on the freedom of the press and the law on the protection of sources while Wolter was seen as putting pressure on Radio 100,7 to reveal its sources.

From Wort.lu : Wolter explained on Monday that Claude Meisch and Xavier Bettel of the DP had made serious accusations that the CSV was behind this campaign to discredit Biever. Wolter added that the party could not let these accusations go uncommented.

Therefore, the party’s MPs decided together to release radio 100,7 from the protection of sources, should the source be a Member of Parliament for the CSV, as the only way to defend the CSV against the allegations. However, Wolter added that the party did not request or demand that the radio reveal its source, nor that the party exercised censorship or attacked the freedom of the press.
The politician expressed his regret over the current political climate in Luxembourg, saying that rumours were being spread to discredit politicians or political parties. Enough false pieces of information would eventually add up to a wrong picture, he said, prompting his strong statement in parliament. Instead, politicians should put their energy to developing ideas and policies to help Luxembourg tackle the future in the current economic climate, Wolter concluded.  

 

This story rang a few bells in my head, particularly with regard to George Vella’s outburst in the Maltese parliament some time ago. The biggest danger the media seems to have in today’s modern democracy is that of being able to cope with the all-pervading and all-interfering instinct that political parties tend to have. The fact that the media wield such a crucial power for the proper functioning of a democracy makes it all the more important that they are protected from such assaults.

Not only in Malta.