I guess it was inevitable. Given Malta’s restricted market and the political magnetic field that we live in, media feuds are bound to occur every now and then. That the sound of flak and counter-flak has now reached a decibel level that is more shrill than just the normal antagonistic banter is worrying many of us who believe that journalists, wherever they are and whoever they work for, should always be comrades in arms, willing to agree to disagree on matters of everyday concern at social, political and other levels.

Many, however, suspect that the current media feud causing a seemingly ceaseless exchange of adjectival missiles between two rival publishing houses has more economic roots than anything else. Could be. It could also be a typical clash of personalities who find themselves at loggerheads by pushing their boats ahead in the desperate race for readers and followers on the electronic highway.

It should be stressed that media feuds are nothing new to Malta. The pre-WWII newspapers not only clashed, but also competed with elaborate linguistic intensity during the hot Language Question when Malta had newspapers in Maltese, English and Italian. You could easily tell which language and which newspaper belonged to which sector of the population, and journalists at the time were not wont to desist from firing personal salvos against rivals in the media.

After the war and with the Language Question finally dead and buried, sporadic media feuds occurred between the Strickland Press, bolstered by the Allies’ victory, and the emerging left-wing Press, which was the direct recipient of several technical and professional stalwarts from none other than the Strickland Press itself. It reminds one of the relatively recent exoduses from national radio and television stations everywhere to the new private broadcasters.

Things improved tremendously in the sixties when Maltese language newspapers found their space and competed for readers in a very distinct but highly-spirited way. Personal animosities, of course, did not lack. I once had an older journalist who threatened to wash my car in my own blood over a newspaper article he insisted I had written, only for us to later become very good mates.

The bitterness and brittleness of political allegiances also never helped, but the vast majority of Maltese journalists have been able to not only overcome this but to even ignore it. So this business of who recorded whom without prior notice and why exclusive interviews are published at one moment in time or another is really a difficult situation we can all do without. Indeed, we need to be ethical at all times, but we also need to avoid getting hot under the collar on issues that will always be issues among us. It is how successful we are to live around them and with them that marks our level of professionalism.

Media feuds often fizzle out after a few weeks of hot terminology filling the air. I am sure the same will happen now, as there are more urgent issues to address in the local media, foremost among them the claustrophobic situation that has developed with the advent of more electronic outlets and a sadly declining standard in both English and Maltese, with language after all being the journalist’s major tool of communication.

Nor should anyone for a single moment think that this is some Maltese idiosyncrasy. Media feuds occur at no less a vigorous rate elsewhere in the civilized world. A case in point is the recent flare-up in the US between the right-wing Fox News host, Bill O’Reilly and a low-circulation left-wing magazine with the endearing title of “Mother Jones” that features investigative and breaking news reporting.

O’Reilly slammed Mother Jones journalist David Corn, who accused him of lying when reporting about the Falklands War. O’Reilly’s former colleague Eric Engberg also added fuel to the fire, saying O’Reilly “behaved unprofessionally”. The dispute came just a week after NBC news anchor Brian Williams took himself off air for lying about his time in Iraq. O’Reilly, a former CBS News reporter blasted back that Mother Jones is considered by many the bottom rung of journalism in America. Familiar aerial boom exchange?
It must be said that Mother Jones alleged in its report that “for years, O’Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don’t withstand scrutiny – even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in”.

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And the EU?

International reports revealed this week that the UN is insisting that conservative/popular party-run Spain should reject controversial anti-protest legislation as it violates basic rights and freedoms. The proposed new law, referred to as a “gag law”, would introduce heavy fines for protesters and has proved extremely unpopular in the country.

A panel of human rights experts from the United Nations said they were concerned about the Public Security Law and the Penal Code initiatives, which they say will violate Spanish people’s human rights. The proposed legislation also advocates the immediate expulsion of illegal immigrants caught trying to enter the country’s enclaves in North Africa.

A UN special expert on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly, Maina Kiai, said the reform “unnecessarily and disproportionately restricts basic freedoms such as the collective exercise of the right to freedom of opinion”, and a group of five experts also said the ambiguity of the new law could have “a chilling effect” on the freedom of peaceful assembly. Critics of the proposed legislation say it is an attempt by the right-leaning government to stop protests. These are related to its handling of the economic crisis, with almost 25 per cent out of work.

Spain is a member of the European Union, but has there been a single whimper about this yet? Not really, but there would have been had it been a government of the Left or a small member state working incessantly at making its economy work.

Perhaps the quality of mass-produced Sangria is, for the EU brass heads, of more interest than basic rights in Spain today.

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Should we do it in Arabic or Swahili?

Another EU member state, Austria, is reported to have had published in Kosovo’s biggest daily newspaper a full-page appeal not to waste time and money trying to get asylum in the EU. The call comes after a surge in the number of Kosovars smuggling themselves out of the impoverished entity.

The Austrian advert warned: “Smugglers are lying. There will be no asylum for economic reasons in Austria. For staying illegally in Austria, you may be punished by up to €7,500.”

In 2012, Serbia, which considers Kosovo its own territory illegally taken away by separatists, allowed Kosovars to travel more freely through its territory with previously unrecognised Kosovo-issued documents. Since then thousands of people rushed from Kosovo through Serbia to seek a better life in various EU countries.

Austrian Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner raised the issue of asylum seekers “We will have a charter plane every two weeks and if there is a need we will engage more planes.”

I am sure there are many in Malta and Gozo who would not be against having a similar appeal published in Arabic or Swahili as a warning to human smugglers and economic refugees seeking to flee from North African coasts and illegally enter Europe via these islands and Italy.

 

If the Austrians can do it, is the assumed reasoning, why can’t we? Again, one wonders what the EU brass heads think about all this...