This country as a whole appears to be suffering from a severe inability to separate fact from perception, and there can be no greater evidence of that than the different interpretations and reactions to two very different reports from the reputed Transparency International.
When Malta was recently found to have climbed one spot in the organisation’s global ranking of corruption perceptions, the government’s all-too-friendly media, its trolls and acolytes poured out reams heralding the result as though it were some kind of proof that corruption in the country was on the decline.
This could not be further from the truth. The report gauges perceptions, not fact, and if one needed a barometer of the national perception of corruption all one would need to do would be to take a look at the last general election result, where the perception the government had so masterfully created very evidently won the day.
And it did so in the face of so many facts that the mind boggles. From all that had been revealed about certain members of the government to all the shady deals that were exposed since 2013, it appears that people’s perceptions have very little correlation with fact.
But when it came to another report by the very same organisation, released shortly after that, condemning the country’s cash for passports scheme as being ‘vulnerable to abuse and undermining the fight against corruption in the EU and neighbouring countries’, and ‘European countries [Malta obviously included] are selling access to the Schengen visa-free travel area, and even EU citizenship, to foreign investors with little scrutiny, transparency or due diligence’, lo and behold, not a single critical word was uttered by those same media organisations. This was a complete and utter disservice to their followers.
Of course, we would not expect the trolls and acolytes to have pounced on this bit of information but we would have expected at least the national broadcaster to have carried both reports with equal weight. But while it had found it fit to herald the fact that perception of corruption in Malta has decreased slightly, it ignored the news value of the other report, one that was based on objective fact and analysis, and which took the citizenship scheme to task.
In most countries, this disparity would be construed as more than strange but hardly an eyelid was batted here in Malta. To have reported with such enthusiasm the fact that the perception, yes the perception, of corruption had improved by one place, but to have, on the other hand, practically ignored the actual findings of what is a most damning report by the very same organisation on one of the government’s more contentious projects is anathema to journalism.
It actually would have been better if the national broadcaster had ignored that second report altogether because the way in which it was treated was nothing short of an abomination. Instead of the actual gist of the report’s findings, it appears to have gone out of its way in search of the silver lining.
It ran with the headline: ‘Malta applies the most restrictions on applications for citizenship with investment’ and quotes a representative of Henley & Partners, the programme’s concessionaires who are making millions off the sale of the Maltese identity, who insisted with the report’s authors that Malta applies the most restrictions among countries for acquiring citizenship with investment.
Then there was the small token sound bite from an Opposition MEP who criticised the programme, but there was absolutely nothing in the national broadcaster’s reportage about the actual findings of the report in question.
It is very evident what is going on in this sycophantic country. This very same turning of blind eyes to the facts in favour of perceptions is so symptomatic of the post-truth world in which we live, where not only the public but also the media cherry picks the news it likes and ignores the rest.
This newsroom, as any responsible news organisation would and should do, reported both stories with equal measure. We will continue to do that, but we will also continue to frame such matters in their right and proper context. In addition, we will continue to hold others, especially the national broadcaster, to account when they fail to do so.