What’s a tinpot dictator got to do these days to get newsrooms to fall in line?
You have to hand it to the Labour Party. If there’s one thing they are good at, it’s cutting down their enemies, irrespective of whether they are real or perceived. To a party that weaponised government for its own corrupt ends, the free press was always going to be public enemy number one.
The design of their governance system is based on a tried and tested formula. Reward those who you can control, isolate those you can’t.
In the media sector, this approach has worked wonders. Government dominates advertising revenue streams, and it is known that the distribution of this revenue is the subject of intense backroom negotiations. Stories have been pulled down as a result of this kind of wheeling and dealing. Better to throw out one story now than compromise a significant chunk of the newsroom’s income for the foreseeable future, or so the flawed logic goes.
There is also access – the prime minister and his Cabinet don’t give interviews or comments to everyone. They only give select bits and pieces to newsrooms at their convenience. Newsrooms tend to report such statements uncritically, and so, everyone gets something out of such an arrangement. Questions are often watered down and tend to fail to address matters which a truly critical reporter would ask about.
In spite of the proven wonders of said approach, there is one small, unforeseen problem which the government is now trying to address with characteristic brutality.
In spite of the severe deterioration of press freedom in Malta, marked by an overall decline in the quality and variety of journalism we see on a daily basis, some of us have defied the odds. Though we are small enough to be pocket-sized when compared with major newsrooms, some of us flow through the holes of the Labour Party’s trap net like water through a sieve. Paranoid and in retreat, the party’s desperate to hush every critic, and so, it sets its sights on a familiar problem: lone journalists who can unpack the government’s house of cards armed with just a laptop.
This was made obvious by prime minister Robert Abela’s facetious, vague remarks about needing to gag unnamed individuals in the press. The message is beyond clear and was picked up on by this website the minute it was uttered in the party’s internal fora: we will bring back criminal libel so we can sue you all to oblivion. Abela just added a more nebulous layer to this by referring to Karl Gouder’s suicide in the context of needing to silence individuals who lack “goodwill.”
Proving his status as a one-trick pony that knows nothing but corruption, Abela deployed a classic strategy favoured by autocrats across the world. He thinks he is in a position to divide and conquer, and so he tells the newsroom journalists holding a microphone in front of him that they are real journalists, and that the unnamed ones he was referring to weren’t. The “small clique” he claims to be targeting want to use online platforms solely to destroy people, he says.
Well, this isn’t the first time Abela hid behind the weight of his own office while failing to name names. He failed to substantiate his wild goose chase claims about the fabled establishment and its anti-Labour allies within the judiciary. Now, he is doing the same exact thing with members of the press his government cannot control or at least exert some measure of influence over.
Allow me to translate – in Labourspeak, Abela is basically saying that the only journalists who he deigns to call by their proper designation are the ones who are subject to his government’s controlling influence over their newsrooms. This is not praise. On the contrary, it is an insult. It is Abela openly admitting to their faces that he does not respect them nor fear them. The Labour Party shows it is afraid indirectly, like when fear of being caught out is all but evidenced by their actions and they are forced to dismiss credible reports as mere fabrication to save face.
It is those of us who are not beholden to the government’s financial and political clout that Abela truly fears. Unable to cajole us with money and access – because we are not interested in promoting the activities of a corrupt government – they must resort to cruder methods, and so choose to use national tragedies as cover to target us without naming us.
‘Be water‘ was the guiding philosophical principle of the Hong Kong citizen protest movement that sought to avert China’s encroachment onto the formerly semi-sovereign city. Though the movement has since been shut down by the relentless Chinese government, it was the first real challenge to China’s authority in the region after the 2014 Umbrella Movement was shut down.
Inspired by Bruce Lee, the movement adapted the concept – adapting to situations and transforming one’s approach in the same way water adapts to its container – to its own daily activities. The police struggled to catch onto the group’s organisational patterns because, simply put, there weren’t any. Thousands of protesters acted independently and in coordinated fashion, all at once, decentralising decision-making through social media and messaging platforms while making it a veritable headache for police to arrest and prosecute anyone.
Faced with the inevitable, precipitous decline in press freedom that this government is all but sure to oversee in the next two years, we must ‘be water’, now more than ever. We must move, behave, talk, and act in a way that eludes this government’s ham-fisted attempts at choking off what’s left of our air supply. For every noose they try to slide our necks into, we must be prepared to dissolve at a moment’s notice.
In practical terms, this means to first of all refuse to abide by the rules of a government that is hostile towards our very existence. Any newsroom journalist who thinks they’re safe just because their editors toe the line fails to understand how serious the situation is, and frankly do not deserve to handle the responsibility that comes with this line of work.
This also means that we must preserve our independence and integrity at all costs. Lines in the sand between mainstream media who are happy to feed at the government’s trough and those who would be happier starving have been drawn a long time ago. Our reporting must go beyond the boundaries which some of us dare not cross, simply because we are the only ones left who can actually do it.
And so, this is my message to the prime minister: do not start a war which you are not willing and able to finish.
Know that I’ve spent the last three years of my life sacrificing everything to build this project. Know that my independence was earned with blood, sweat, and tears, and that I will only part with it after my last breath.
I understand that my single greatest asset is my integrity, and that it is something which you and your army of cronies will never possess. I defy your system because I am not corruptible. I could receive another dozen buyout and distribution deals from commercial outlets – their money does not interest me. My product, my added value, all under my control. Nobody else’s.
So go ahead, dear prime minister. You’ve cast the first stone, go ahead and cast the next. Tell us who this small evil clique of journalists is. Tell us who you think is a real journalist and who isn’t, and why. Stop hiding behind the shadows of your paranoid delusions and face your critics like a man with a functional spine would.
If you are not capable of doing at least that, then just do us all a favour and piss off so we can rebuild the country in peace.
