Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1107757
24 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 21 APRIL 2019 OPINION Raphael Vassallo 'Reporters Without Braincells', more like it... HAS anyone come up with an epitaph for international journalism yet? I mean, it's not as though it just sud- denly keeled over and snuffed it from one moment to the next. The profes- sion has, in fact, been decomposing for several years now; and even before its death could be certified, the symptoms of an incurable, terminal illness had been visible for decades. They included a tendency to forget what the role of journalism was even supposed to be all about… resulting in another tendency to simply twist (sometimes invent) facts to suit the media's non-journalistic agenda. And if the so-called 'rules' of journalism find themselves unceremoniously defenes- trated in the transaction… then so be it. What use is there for them, anyway, if journalism is no longer your primary objective? For the sake of paying tribute to these (now very evidently dead) rules and protocols… here are a few of the basics. Journalists are supposed to: check their sources; attempt to verify any infor- mation before publishing/uploading; corroborate allegations through at least one other independent confirmation; and, in brief, come up with stories that at least bear some resemblance to the reality on the ground. Take away any one of those pillars of journalism, and the entire edifice will simply collapse. If a journalist rushes to print with the first allegation he or she hears, without even pausing to consider the possibility that it might very easily be a crock of bull – concocted for God- only-knows what ulterior motives – well, how is that any different from any old village gossip at the fishmonger's? Why should anyone believe 'the printed word', any more than the insane ram- blings of their local town drunk? It is a question that local journalists had better start asking themselves, be- fore declaring 'war' on one another: as seems to have happened here in the last couple of weeks. For while the Times and MaltaToday were at each other's throats… and, even more astonish- ingly, the PN's Medialink turned its heavy artillery onto Allied Newspapers – surveys were being published indicat- ing that the Maltese press (including all those titles) has meanwhile somehow managed to lose what little credibility it may ever once have had. This, for instance, is from the most recent Eurobarometer survey (February 2019): "The report notes that 36% of re- spondents said that they trust political parties (compared to an 18% EU aver- age) while 32% of respondents said that they trust the written media (compared to a 47% EU average)." It is almost a word-for-word repeti- tion of previous year's Eurobarometer survey findings: "only 32% of Maltese respondents said they trust the written press, the joint fourth worst in Europe – behind only the UK, Macedonia and Serbia..." Funny, isn't it, that a nation would lose trust in a media sector that is evidently more concerned with play- ground battle-tactics, than with getting on with the business of reporting on the state of the country? But to me, the most conspicuous (and calamitous) facet to emerge is the 36% which "trust political parties", and how it compares to the rest of Europe. In defence of Malta's main political par- ties: at least, those two don't normally disguise their intentions to outrightly screw this nation over, and shamelessly plunder all its assets and resources for their own gain. They've actually been quite honest and forthright about those intentions, you know. They always tell us right to our faces that – for instance – they don't give a shit about local communities, so long as the construc- tion lobby keeps pumping money into their own coffers, as always. So it's not as though we can't see, with our own eyes, that these people are shamelessly exploiting us. Just yester- day, Opposition leader Adrian Delia informed us all that he is 'concerned about the state of environment', and specifically about 'large construction projects that produce a lot of waste'. Really? Could have fooled me, because just a day earlier, his party had unani- mously approved a motion in support of the Gozo tunnel project: which is… erm… kind of large; which will produce an incalculable volume of construction waste; and which is still subject to this mysterious phenomenon called an 'En- vironmental Impact Assessment' study. Yet Adrian Delia's Nationalist Party – like Joseph Muscat's Labour Party, which proposed this aberration in the first place – is so 'concerned with the environment', that he couldn't even wait to find out what the environmen- tal impact would be, before giving the project his wholehearted, uncondi- tional support. And yet… both Adrian Delia and Joseph Muscat, who make absolutely no secret of their duplicitous political agendas, remain considerably more trusted than the Maltese print media. If this is not a credibility crisis for the Maltese media… then what the heck is? Still: if it's any consolation, it is not just the local print media that has completely (but completely) lost sight of its main professional mission. The slow, painful death of journalism is by no means limited only to this little rock of ours: just look at the report pub- lished last week by 'Reporters Without Borders', for instance. "In Malta, which has continued to fall in the Index (down 12 to 77th place), a handful of journalists are [sic] trying to continue the work of anti- corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia. They are shedding light on the island state's rampant corruption and money-laundering, despite an oppres- sive and worrying climate still marked by Caruana Galizia's murder in October 2017. As well as having to live in fear, they are subjected to intense judicial harassment." Hmm. Remember those 'rules and protocols' I mentioned earlier? The first one was 'check your sources'. In other words: run background checks on who the people you are talking to really are, and what their interest may be in influ- encing your output. Who are these 'handful of journal- ists', who seem to be the only people Reporters Without Borders actually spoke to? Well, seeing as there are only two 'media outlets' that came into being precisely for the purpose of "continu- ing the work of anti-corruption blogger Daphne Caruana Galizia", I feel confi- dent in guessing that it's a direct refer- The profession has, in fact, been decomposing for several years now; and even before its death could be certif ied, the symptoms of an incurable, terminal illness had been visible for decades