Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/914278
maltatoday SUNDAY 10 DECEMBER 2017 Interview 14 By Raphael Vassallo For the past two months, Malta has been convulsed by the brutal murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia: a crime which has been discussed and debated on a wide variety of levels... not just in Malta, but also in the international press. It has, in fact, been described as a 'murder like no other': but how true is that assessment, from a strictly criminology perspective? I always use the word 'cycles' to describe the phenomenon of crime in Malta. Going back in time, you will find sustained periods of our history that were characterised by crimes involving bombs... these will have been related to socio- logical factors of the time. Society is made up of a lot of things: the economy, politics, religion, edu- cation... what is different today, however, is that unlike the other periods of the 1980s, 1970s, 1960s, etc, there is the additional factor of social media. A lot of people, especially the younger generation, now mainly live in a virtual world. The impact this has on any crime that is reported is that, apart from the traditional media, you will also have those 100,000... let's say, 'journalists'... I use the word in pa- renthesis, naturally. But everyone has suddenly become a journalist, it seems. There are trained jour- nalists, some of whom have a very thorough background in their pro- fession; and then, there are those 100,000 people who comment on everything, and always manage to solve all the cases. In reality, crimi- nology doesn't work that way. In reality, you need long months of investigation. Journalists need to do research before arriving at the facts. Yet under every article, even if it took a week of work to pro- duce... you get all these comments giving different interpretations of events. And the irony is that, in to- day's society most people no longer read the article at all. They all read the headline, and then scroll down to the comments. As a result, the crime itself becomes indistinguish- able from the public reaction to it. We need to decouple these issues. Maybe I'm a bit drastic; but if it were up to me, I wouldn't allow the input of comments. But that is modern society for you: all too of- ten, people base their opinions on these comments, not on the basis of facts and research. From the point of view of a criminal investigator, does this constant spread of (often speculative) information have any effect on the investigation itself? It's an issue that affects criminol- ogy, yes. If a politician says, 'We need to arrest this or that person'... people will follow their political in- stincts, and not necessarily the facts of the case. The reality, however, is that a criminologist has to work on the basis of facts. And facts do not materialise overnight. It takes time. This is true everywhere, not just in Malta. Let me put it another way: criminology was at first a subset of sociological research, way back when. But what is sociology? At the end of the day, it is the study of relationships. This doesn't mean that like-minded people will always become criminals, or, conversely, policemen fighting crime. A 'rela- tionship' could also exist between the victim and the criminal. And relationships tend to be very com- plex. Society, as a whole, is a mass of such relationships. How we in- terpret those relationships is where the problem lies. Even more so, when you find yourself confronted by a great cloud of commentary, with everyone firing off all sorts of interpretations of their own. It ir- ritates me a lot... because it takes us away from the reality. Instead, we are getting bogged down by the fantasy of all those comments. This raises a dilemma often faced by journalists, especially when trying to report on crime issues. The media is duty-bound to meet a public demand for information. The public in turn has a right to know, at least insofar as public interest matters are concerned. Where, however, does one draw the line between servicing that public need, and publishing details that might conceivably prejudice a criminal investigation? All I can say is, I myself do not believe any detail unless it comes from a factual source. And the only reliable source is what is said in court. Everything else is just specu- lation. This should be obvious, but we seem to have reached a stage when even the obvious has to be spelt out. The media tends to quote 'sources' – sometimes within the police, sometimes not. But what are these sources? You cannot hide behind sources which cannot be identified. To me, the only factual statements are those said under oath as testimony in court, where the witness can be cross-examined. It is, however, ironic that the public need for information – which acts like an injection: one detail creates an appetite for more – can drive certain newspapers to publish de- tails that are actually fictitious. They might be true, but they might also be false... One example of direct relevance to the ongoing murder investigation was the detail - ultimately inaccurate - that the explosive used was Semtex: a possibility that fuelled all sorts of public speculation... Let me put it this way: at the Uni- versity, the criminology depart- ment gets a lot of students. They apply in droves. They probably see me as a bit of a downer, because the first thing I tell new students is: 'Listen, this isn't CSI. We're get- ting there... we have technologies that other countries don't have; we have a methodology that we are building up ourselves. But we're not there yet'. I do this because a lot of people come to us with very high hopes, that they will get a de- gree in criminology... and then be able to look at a chair, and tell you who sat on it, when, and in what specific position, etc. There is this need to fuel oneself with instant in- sight. But insight cannot be instant. It can only come through a lot of research. The reality is that there are a lot of different scientific dis- ciplines involved; criminal detec- tion cannot be the work of just one person. Meanwhile, however, we are increasingly living in a world of instant information. Whether this information is correct or not is an- other story. But the issue is 'instant gratification'. Information (or mis- information) can spread like wild- fire across the world, at the click of a mouse. It is fuelled by this con- stant need to know something new. In a sense, things have become easier... but they have also become infinitely difficult. The moment a new detail emerges, people rush to the internet to find out more... and often make links between unrelat- ed issues. The internet is a network of information, yes... but 99% of it is rubbish. There is, however, that 1% which constitutes 'the truth'. Peo- ple will ideally be looking for that 1% of truth, but they cannot filter it out from all the junk. Certainly, a lot of details have emerged (whether true or not remains unclear) regarding this murder case: mostly in foreign media. We were given details about SMSs sent by the suspects, which appear to shed light on the investigation that led to those arrests. Can any of this information jeopardise the investigation? I see such details as unnecessary myself. One, I don't think these details should come out at all; two, it is unnecessary to fuel the public need for information with issues that may or may not be true. I can't comment specifically about this case; but in more general terms, it has become almost inevitable that unnecessary details are splashed out in the media. Let's face it: crime is sexy. The sort of details that emerge from a crime story excite people's imagination. And they can be misleading. To give an example, there was once a case where a mur- der was committed over a plate of chips. It happened in Bugibba: a man murdered another man, for stealing a chip from his plate. In a separate case, a man from Zejtun killed another man with a shot- gun, because he had given him a dirty look. These are real cases. But when you sift through the back- ground stories, you will find that in the first instance, it was a random invasion of private space. The two men didn't know each other at all. In the second case, those two had been fighting for 60 years. That look was the last straw that broke the camel's back... This murder case in particular also has clear political overtones. Isn't there a danger that the resulting pressure could possibly distort the nature of the investigation itself? After all, politicians tend to have ulterior motives that might go beyond solving a murder... It's a good point. We are living in a country which is still parochial in nature. Ours is a parochial system, not a political system. At times we approach the concept of states- manship... but to gain brownie points, we always fall back on pa- rochialism. And we tend to use 'criminality' to attack one party or the other: it's something we saw in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, 80s... the dec- ades changed, but the overall aim remained the same. What angers me most, however, is not when this happens at the local level – though that angers me too. But I can un- derstand a Maltese politician be- having like that... because Maltese politics is, as I said, parochial. It's always the same story: we need to show that the others are devils, and that we are angels. It irritates me much more when the same thing happens at European level. The fact that we take our local paro- chialism to another, higher level - where people do not know the local situation - is something out of this world. To picture Malta as a crime haven, when it is one of the safest countries in the EU... to me, that's inexcusable. This is not a criminal country. If it were, nobody would come here: not to invest in the economy, not even as tourists. The fact that we go out there, and feed other politicians – who are also pa- rochial; we have seen this recently To picture Malta as a crime haven, when it is one of the safest countries in the EU... to me, that's inexcusable PAROCHIALISM PHOTOGRAPHY BYJAMES BIANCHI This isn't 'Crime Scene