It would be presumptuous for anyone to think he or she does not make any sweeping statements. It is a natural human tendency and difficult to define precisely, but journalists and broadcasters have, over the centuries, made a special craft of it. Coupled with the spin tactics that were fully developed (let's admit it, it has always existed) two decades ago, it can be a hell of a tool, some say more of a weapon.

So we all do it, one way or another. When sweeping statements are tampered with, a sense of either anger or arrogance can cause instant disdain or discomfort. It happens to me often as I read and on the look-out for such verbal cocktails, only to forget them as quickly as I have read them or heard them. But recently, two such reactions stuck tantalisingly in my mind as if crying out loud for sharing.

One occurred in Italy when it was announced that our EU neighbours were fined €40 million by Brussels for not having followed strictly the rules governing waste management and waste disposal. Even worse, the EU's court of justice has also established a penalty of €42.8 million per semester until Italy finally actuates the measures to fight illegal dumping decided on way back in 2007.

Tough, no? Then out comes, on TV and the print media, one of the ministers on borrowed political time declaring: "Italy won't be paying a single cent of any of that." Sweeping enough, but hardly becoming to one of the EU's founder members. EU-bashing has become standard practice. As a sporadic EU-basher myself, I find some amusing element in all this, but maybe not as amusing as watching the UK's David Cameron doing his theatrical anti-EU pieces over immigration by way of appeasing the electorate.

Wind down back geographically to our little isle, and tread gently and directly into the Law Courts for another piece de resistance. The start of the Fr Charles Fenech sexual abuse case before Magistrate Tonio Micallef Trigona last Monday had one of those moments where a sweeping statement packaged in a thin wrapper of haughtiness was delivered with characteristic aplomb.

When the defending lawyer asked the Court for the case to be heard in camera or, as the rest of us prefer to call it, behind closed doors, he offered to provide it with a list of similar cases that had actually been heard "in chambers" before.

The magistrate did not take this offer too kindly. He sweepingly informed the defending lawyer that he was not interested in what had taken place with regard to previous cases and insisted that whether this case was to be heard behind closed doors or not was at the court's discretion. Goodness me, the poor lawyer was only trying to back up his request with some useful statistics!

This thing called "the court's discretion" has always irked me both as a journalist and a citizen. By discretion, it seems that they mean to say that a magistrate or a judge can decide differently to other magistrates and judges on similar cases in similar circumstances. You're lucky if you find yourself before this fancily-robed individual, but unlucky before another. Shouldn't there be one clear way of doing things and not depend on whether the sitting magistrate or judge is in a bad mood for having lost his game of Squash earlier that morning?

I dare say that such cases should ALL be heard in camera. Then let the public and the media have the details once the whole legal process has been carried out and justice presumably meted out. For one accused to be the lucky recipient of a magistrate's or judge's benevolent mood and another accused to be rebuffed and publicly vilified before he is proved guilty, is tantamount to a parody of the justice we are supposed to be dispensing.

Or is this a sweeping statement on my part?

 

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Putting money where one's mouth is

Six former US detainees, four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian, who have never been charged, have begun a new life as refugees in Uruguay.

Although they were cleared for release in 2009, more than five long years ago, the US was not able - or did not want - to discharge them until Uruguayan President Jose Mujica offered to take them. One of the Syrians, 32-year-old Ali al-Shaaban, had been held for more than a decade in the notorious Guantanamo prison in Cuba, after he was arrested in Pakistan following the 9/11 attacks.

No one seems to have lost any sleep over this crass treatment by the world's only super power of innocent detainees, until Jose Mujica, the 79-year old Uruguayan President made his humanitarian gesture by accepting the former detainees as refugees in his country. Rather than keeping silent lest the US warlords got annoyed, Mujica was putting money where his mouth is. After all, he himself spent 13 years in prison and two of those in solitary confinement, incarcerated by Uruguay's military dictatorship. It is a known fact that he even voted against trials for crimes committed when Uruguay was under military rule.

His decision was not popular in Uruguay. Many people expressed fears that the country had accepted to host "a bunch of terrorists". In truth, their President was showing heart and leading by example, as his refusal to stay in a palace or drive a luxury official car has shown since his election to the highest post in the country.

 

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Putting one's foot in one's mouth

Is it, after all, a case of putting one's foot in one's mouth or one of media misinterpretation that surfaced in recent days with regard to Dr Louis Galena's reported claim that the Maltese government has been asked to reimburse European funds following an auditing exercise on spending?

It very much looked like that when Dr Galea, a member of the European Court of Auditors, eventually sought to explain it all, adding that he was only trying to show, in generic terms, what the consequences are from the irregular use of funds. He even insisted he did not know of any particular case over which the Maltese government has been asked to return EU funds.

Dr Galea has never been one to pass up the challenge of swimming against the tide, but it looks like it hasn't been very easy for him this time to take his foot out of his mouth.

 

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Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year to the Editor, his staff and all readers.