I feel like today is as good a day as any to deal with the you’re always negative crowd.
The premise of the critique is always the same. Anyone who fails to parrot government talking points alongside their critique is labelled as negatively biased.
Shoveling equal volumes of shit from ‘both sides’ is considered the ‘fair’ thing to do as a journalist. Neutrality blends into objectivity as if the two could ever be the same.
I’m not going to cover my bias with a fig leaf. My coverage of the government’s operations is entirely negative.
I make absolutely no effort to write about the high points of this administration. Here’s why I see no problem with that, and why, quite frankly, neither should you – not unless you’re in the business of licking boots. If that is the case, I suggest you go read something else. You won’t be missed here.
For starters: I am not a daily news platform. I am one journalist with one laptop and just one pair of typing hands. Unless I sprout more arms and manage to afford another laptop, that isn’t changing anytime soon.
Therefore, the topics I write about are largely dictated by how much time they’re going to eat up from my schedule. A daily like the Times of Malta can afford to write up anything from hyper-local public service announcements to breaking international news. I must pick and choose.
So, why the constant focus on bad news?
The accusations are certainly colourful. The most common one is that I am an agent of the Nationalist Party, hellbent on making the government look bad so my party can finally get its turn at the trough. That is a tall tale that is as old as the Labour Party’s lifelong demonisation of Daphne Caruana Galizia.
Rest assured that if anything happens to me or anyone like me, there are several among the Nationalist Party who will breathe a sigh of relief as much as the next corrupt government appointee.
Other accusations I hear often include that I am a disgruntled burnout, that I am simply unable to follow established protocol, and that I am a rebel without a cause who enjoys the chaos but can offer little else.
To be honest, all of those things are somewhat true to varying degrees. The only statement I’d accept as wholly untrue would be the idea that bad news gets clicks. Proper investigative journalism gets less clicks than whatever’s popular on TikTok. In a nation that worships idle thought and pointless entertainment, one can hardly expect much else.
All of these arguments, which serve only to discredit and minimise, fail to acknowledge that all of my criticism is valid.
Just because it is not juxtaposed next to an equivalent avalanche of ‘positive’ coverage does not render any of what I say untrue. Everything I’ve ever said is backed by evidence to sustain it.
Given that I painstakingly ensure that I read about absolutely everything that is going on, I am aware that the government sometimes engages in policy-making that leaves a positive impact on society.
One obvious example is scrounging up more taxpayer money for pensioners and other potentially vulnerable demographics. Addressing specific problems like food waste by creating a framework to avoid it is another. Relaxing income tax brackets can also go a long way.
The problem is that all of the goodwill generated by such initiatives is undone by an overriding fact: corruption vitiates everything.
The so-called “negativity” that permeates all of my writing about current affairs stems from this fact. It is useless to praise a government that engages in superficial (but nonetheless helpful) policy-making while pretending the very foundation upon which all of it stands isn’t completely rotten.
Besides the logistical limits imposed by the fact that I do all this work alone, I also reject the idea that news platforms should feel obliged to broadcast government-friendly content in pursuit of some misaligned notion of fairness.
That argument would have been acceptable back when newspapers were the dominant means with which information was disseminated. This is no longer the case.
Both the government and the opposition have significant resources at their disposal. Both of them have their own television, radio, and online presence. They can reach the vast majority of the electorate without really sweating it. So why should a newspaper blindly carry a press release? Because of pathetic, powerful men who complain about being unfairly represented by ‘fake news’ at every turn? Boohoo, cry us a river.
In the 21st century, a journalist’s job is to hold power accountable in an era where power absolutely does not want to be held accountable.
We write bad news all the time because or job isn’t to tell you when the government is actually functioning.
Do you feel like someone should be congratulating you whenever you perform the tasks you agreed to perform for payment at your place of work? No? Then why should the public be fed any of that through a news portal? It makes no sense.
The government doing things to improve citizens’ lives isn’t newsworthy. The government can use its perfectly legitimate means of communication to inform the public of its service and convince the electorate to trust it to do so come next general elections.
Journalism didn’t just unravel on its own like a badly woven piece of fabric. Corruption festers because government representatives engage in it at the expense of everyone else. Journalists who expose corruption have been deliberately targeted since the profession was conceived.
The dangers we face in the present are merely manifest destiny born of those actions. Journalists should keep that in mind whenever they are asked to write up another press release.
Their lives may depend on it.