It is with sadness that we note the depths to which some of the local media have descended, all in the name of a few extra eyeballs and a catchy headline.

The Sliema double killing of New Year’s Day was a tragedy. There is no other way to describe it. Two men, both young, lost their lives in a mysterious knife fight. Two babies have been left without a father as a result.

Newspapers and news portals are bound to report fact and that is what most did. There were elements of speculation over whether Gera and Zammit knew each other, and the gap from when the arguments were supposed to have started, to the point where the police were called. But that is where it is supposed to stop. These are reasoned arguments that can also serve to help the police in their investigations. But to bandy about theories of relationships and other absurd gossip is just way out of order.

The worst culprits were the comment boards on various news portals. Those comments should have been vetted. The killings did not stop with the death of two young men. There are families involved, children, mothers, fathers, babies, a wife… is this any way that the media should be allowing the huge gossip machine which is Malta to behave?

Many of the ordinary folk who do not normally go onto these comment sections have even been taking to Facebook to voice their disgust at the way some people have put forward their ‘theories’ as to what might have happened.

We heard all the rumours, just as everyone else did. Did we publish them? Of course not. It is not fitting, it is morally wrong and it is not fact. Rumours are rumours and we, as a publishing house, do not feel that it is acceptable for any form of blog or news portal to be publishing such material, whether it is in the form of an article, or a user comment.

The Institute of Maltese Journalists is toothless and is simply a clique which is used as a means to an end. It is up to individual houses to do the decent thing and self-regulate. Do we really want to descend into tabloid hell? Because that is what is going to happen if we are not more careful. When a case like this unfolds, it shocks us; all of us. And after the initial scramble to assemble as much of the story as possible, journalists ought to sit down with their editors and come up with acceptable content. Even if one were to argue that comments are what they are, they should still be vetted.

But above all else, this case has exposed our morbid fascination with gossiping whenever a killing takes place. Doing it in your living room is one thing, but doing it on a public, permanent internet comments board is quite frankly despicable. Do people not know how much they are hurting the true victims? Do people not understand that both Gera and Zammit have parents? Do people not understand that two babies will never see their father again? Do people not understand that these babies will one day grow up and find all the filth and bile that has been posted on the internet? Maybe not, and that is why we had to write this today. The place for theories and statements, at this point, is the magisterial inquiry; nowhere else.