Tabloid truths

I have to admit I have always loved the genuine tabloids and actually spent a good number of years of my own splashing huge typeface for frontpage headlines in my newspaper days.

There really is nothing like a good old tabloid, more so before the economic-spurred spate of new tabloid imitators who grudgingly shed their self-assumed “quality” tag to become, well, what they used to refer to others as “rags”.

We have the perfect example here. People of my generation who were weaned on the “quality” of the local Times, despite its historical anti stances over Maltese workers’ rights, Maltese independence, Maltese freedom in general and preferring to toe the line of the ruling class and their foreign masters, today find it so difficult to reconcile that with what it has become. Not that there haven’t been attempts at breaking out of the time warp it was caught in. Editors like Toni Montanaro, Charles Grech Orr, Laurence Grech and Victor Aquilina still had to adhere to policies considered by many as obsolete, but they were bold enough to give the paper their own personal touch, opening up space to writers and viewpoints that went off at a tangent in the opposite direction of those very same policies.

To think I had, for a number of years, written a weekly column fills me with both satisfaction and amusement, though I will admit it was a fascinating experience addressing readers certainly unused to liberal thought. I know Aquilina had to face some internal flak for that decision, but it showed the man’s belief in fair and open discussion, as every journalist should. The tragic attack on the newspaper’s building in the 1970s and the psychological impact it must have had on all those involved in the paper at the time still did not tarnish his editorial prowess.

What issue merits this rather pompous introduction, this morning? A worrying “tabloid”style piece on the Leader of the Opposition, one that, on reading it, thousands of people must have uttered “this is not the Times I have known since childhood”. The private side of politicians should never ever be given an inch of space on the information battlefield. I am sure Mabel Strickland still murmurs the same counsel from her grave. Why it should in any way interest anyone, let alone a journalist who has a lot more serious issues to dig into, where Dr Adrian Delia happens to sleep at night (plus other unsavoury, intimate details) is beyond comprehension.

Not so long ago, this same hack took me to task over some innocuous, albeit complimentary, comment I had made on a colleague’s decision to go into politics, even accusing me of being “scathing” (which I have never been) in my writings when discussing the Opposition Leader. My only personal contention with Dr Delia is over the fact his Birkirkara outfit once beat my West Ham in European football, a sporting humiliation I have not lived down yet, nor would friends let me.

Personal, vindictive pieces have no place in journalism, tabloid genuine, tabloid fake and electronic tabloid alike. We have had, over the decades, many such stories emanating from all sides and hues of the political/media/blogger spectrum, but every time it happens we know it is a sad and self-defeating exercise. Our young editors, online and on newsprint, need to steer clear from the malicious idea of settling old scores or of seeking to sow inter-party division by angling into the private lives of politicians rather than their policies and decisions.

An end to the travesty

The burning issue of migration in Europe, but particularly in the central Mediterranean, where our blob of land happens to be, will not subside before action is taken to ensure fair burden-sharing and an end to the travesty of some of the so-called NGOs making an attractive business out of it. How to achieve that remains the problem at a time when most European nations are caught in a bitter struggle to survive economically while the pandemic threatens to raise its ugly head again after the current respite.

But there is a new awareness. The German government’s decision to change the rules in connection with small vessels used for environmental protection and rescue operations seems to be the first of a series of measures against those exploiting the plight of thousands of immigrants by enticing them into taking outrageous risks (at a monetary price, of course) and then dumping them, courtesy of the nearest port authorities, into hideous camps and over-populated centres where they have to sometimes wait for years to be either repatriated or granted residence and work permits.

The German decision of course did not go down well with some of the NGOs which, like the tabloids, can be either genuine or fake. Organisations with glorified names like Mare Liberum, Mission Lifeline and Resqship will have a lot more to worry about if other European nations follow the German example. Apart from Germany, there are also NGO vessels from Spain and the Netherlands plying the central Mediterranean. The only problem is that while they fly these countries’ maritime flags, they offload their unfortunate cargoes on others, like Malta, Italy, Cyprus and Greece. The action on the part of the German government is hopefully – and partially – a longdelayed realisation of the sad interconnection between illegal migration and human trafficking.

To describe the German action as “sabotage” shows that some of the NGOs simply do not want to bite the bullet and accept the blaring fact that only a European solution can stop this ongoing human tragedy and not their blatant manipulation of the whole issue.

Malta is, among others, a major victim of their assumed role of super heroes. One only has to see what has sadly become of some of the once-thriving Greek islands, like Lesbos (1,632.8 square kilometres, much bigger than Malta) and Kos (290.3 square kilometres, slightly smaller) to shudder at the thought, given we are already overpopulated and practically holding on to the coastline from our fingernails. In the case of the much smaller Italian island of Lampedusa, it is highly significant that the once generous locals now want to dismantle the “Welcome through the gate to Europe” monument.