Not just another industry
The new media bill is good piece of legislation that will free the media from laws that don’t make sense any longer, with the latest amendments to the bill a further enhancement.
The removal of criminal libel, the concept of mediation rather than automatic court proceedings, the removal of the legislation allowing to seize assets and abolishing the obligation of editors to register their newsroom are among the proposals put forward.
The protection of sources has also been extended, not just to traditional journalists, but anyone who is carrying out an act of journalism. Another addition is the provision that will ensure damages awarded are proportional to the size of the media organisation being sued as well as fewer powers being given to the relevant minister.
In practical terms, the media will have more freedom in which to operate. We discussed the changes with people from the industry and the public at large. The dialogue was, for the most part, a constructive one and I think most people understood what we were trying to achieve and helped us create a better model. I believe this media bill will bring about an improvement in the legislative framework and, hopefully, more common sense approach.
However, the principles and values of a journalist should certainly not be in the political domain. Journalism is bigger than that. It’s an important pillar which should be self-regulated for the most part, with very limited government intrusion. There is a lot to improve in the industry, and the stronger the media is the more benefits our society can reap. The media sector is simply not just another industry.
In Malta, we have the second highest rate in Europe of people who say they never read a newspaper, and only 32% trust the written press. Clearly, there is work to do. It’s funny when you think about it but the most insightful and honest thoughts I get from journalists are the ones they tell you informally, away from the microphone.
I am not worried about the phenomenon of things such as fake news - it takes time for consumers to recalibrate their critical processes and adapt to the mountain of content they are getting. Fake news won’t prevail in the long run. Nor will the editor or the journalist chasing a story vanish any day soon. Of course, you’ll have various new types of citizen journalism but structured journalism is and will remain a vital function to communicate news.
What I see as concerning, as a media old-timer, is the rise of intellectual prostitution. I am not talking about party-owned media or the bickering between politicians. I’m not talking about a stance which a paper may take or an opinion, no matter how extreme, of a particular individual but about a type of journalism which systemically mixes fact with fiction in a recipe intended to draw the reader into an obvious untruthful conclusion.
It’s the journalism which, just like a dishonest statistician or a swindling investment banker, twists and turns things to make you feel and think in a certain way. Facts are just stuff that get in the way. What I’m talking about is the way it’s done - malicious, calculated and intentionally misleading - and you can find this in places you’d expect better of, by people much smarter than this.
This is, by no means, something limited to Malta. I remember the times when Italian heroes such as Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were destroyed every single day in the Italian press in the 1980s. Public opinion was swayed and they were denigrated by everyone politicians and religious figures included. They are martyrs today, with airports named after them. They weren’t martyrs then.
The root was what Roberto Saviano called the “systematic mudslinging machine”. Throw enough every day and some will invariably stick. They were accused of being career judges, of doing it for the spotlight and of being in the pockets of different mafia clans.
I am writing about this not because I think the Maltese press is anywhere as bad as the Sicilian newspapers of the 1980s, but because we have taken the trajectory of seeing newspapers as weapons and articles as bullets.
Weapons and bullets that influential people use to attack some people and avoid attacking others. The way they muddle up the truth and fiction until you do not know which is which.
It should not be this way and we must learn from what happened in other places, when ‘journalism’ was shamefully used to vilify. I am saying this not as a sanctimonious moraliser but as someone who has worked, and erred, throughout the different sides of the industry - warts and all.
The big existential questions a journalist faces today are not about click-baiting, social media or even fake news. They’re about back-to-basics: values such as honesty, integrity and the pursuit of the truth no matter what. No media bill can ever fix that these changes are something the industry as a whole has to continue to aspire to.
The big existential questions a journalist faces today are not about click-baiting, social media or even fake news. They’re about back-to-basics: values such as honesty, integrity and the pursuit of the truth no matter what