Even in death, there are no good manners
When will Super One ‘journalists’ learn to respect the privacy of those who are distressed and grieving?
An intrepid team from One News turned up at Maghtab with a camera rolling when the body of Mrs Psaila, who died in a riding accident, was still on the ground and her dazed and disoriented family were milling about in disbelief.
Imagine, if you can, being in the terrible position of having to deal with an unexpected death like that. Then imagine looking up to see a news camera bearing down on you, with a reporter ready to importune anyone around who will talk.
What would your reaction be, apart from the sensation of being in a very strange environment peopled by those who no longer seem to know that there is a time and place for everything, and that for some things there is neither time nor place?
When the ‘news team’ were chased away with suitably harsh language, they went back to the newsroom to file their report, which was later aired in their silly season bulletin.
“Out of respect we are not going to broadcast the bad language used against our crew, but we are showing this filmat of how the One News team were prevented from carrying out their journalistic duties,” a mealy-mouthed reporter droned over footage of the distressed family.
An appropriate gesture apparently made at the One News cameraman by one of the Psaila brothers was pixellated, no doubt also ‘out of respect’.
Their journalistic duties?
A private citizen dies in a riding accident and it is somehow the ‘duty’ of journalists working for a political party broadcaster to film the grieving relatives and bother them for comments?
I don’t think so.
Other people’s grief is no one’s business, and nor are the deaths of private citizens – not even those of public figures. You just don’t invade people at that point.
It’s insensitive, it’s gross, it’s grotesque, it’s a parody of concern, and it’s about nothing but pandering to morbid fascination with the private tragedies of others.
Curiosity about other people’s grief is not a legitimate demand for information. There is no such thing as ‘the people’s right to know’ what other people look like when dead, or when they are gazing in horror at the body of their wife or mother.
In that situation, everyone who is not directly involved, who is not a doctor or a police officer, should just stay out of it.
People in the throes of shock and grief don’t want strangers around. They don’t want the pseudo-pity of ‘ara jahasra, x’garalhom’ prying acquaintances. They want to be left alone until they are ready to deal with others.
And while we’re about it, I have something to say about a closely related subject: the growing fashion for posting condolences on the internet instead of doing the decent thing and ringing the family after a suitable interval or writing them a private letter and posting it immediately.
How easy it is to dash off a comment on the internet and be done with it, and how very silly and meaningless it is. It makes a mockery of any real sentiment a person might feel, and it belittles the full extent of the suffering of those who are mourning.
And above all else, it is utterly tasteless and so very, very showy. It just tells everyone that you want to be part of the story.
Top prize for the most offensive comment of all must go to the man who rushed to be first in line with his ‘Condolences to Mr Psaila’, followed by – would you believe – a reverse smiley symbol.
My internet-focussed son tells me that the trouble with people ‘your age’ is that we don’t know the rules of internet communication. Apparently, there are some.
So we are the equivalent of backwoods peasants let loose at a palace ball: thrilled with our surroundings but with no clue that we’re getting it wrong.
I think it’s a mix of that and something more socially sinister: the growing belief that if we don’t have witnesses to our every movement, utterance and fleeting emotion, then they don’t exist.
We don’t exist.
Look at Facebook, where even grown men and women with homes and families and serious jobs feel the need to update ‘everyone’ on what they are doing, thinking, feeling, watching and eating.
What are they afraid of – that they will cease to exist unless people are looking at them, unless they remind us every 20 minutes of their existence?
Posting condolences on an internet comments-board is part of this phenomenon. What should be a private exchange is suddenly public, open to anyone around the world who might happen to chance upon this ghoul-fest.
The more people are in there posting expressions of sympathy, the more others feel they have to do the same. ‘If X has posted a comment, then we had better post one too, otherwise the grieving widower/widow/hysterical parents will think we don’t care.’
As though anyone in that position, walking through a waking nightmare, actually gives a damn about who has and hasn’t commented on the internet.
I wish I could tell these people, loud and clear: Hey, it’s not about you.
Also, if you’re going to use the internet, why not send a private email instead of posting a public comment?
Posting messages of sympathy on the internet, beneath a news story reporting a death, is nothing short of really poor manners. It is an exercise in exhibitionism. Worst of all are those who go on and on about how they knew the dead person or still know those who are grieving.
How can I put it bluntly enough? You can’t be much of a friend or close colleague if your chosen way of communicating your compassion is via the comments-board on timesofmalta.com.
And I can find no word for those whose instant reaction, on hearing of an associate’s death, is to root around in their digital archive for a photograph to send to the newsrooms.
I can’t imagine what on earth these people might be thinking – and then they ask for a photo-credit, too.
Stop it, all of you.
What has happened to common decency and good manners? Do you imagine that young men who have lost their mother, or a man who has lost his wife, in circumstances that will leave them sick to the stomach with shock and disbelief for long years after everyone else has forgotten, who will find themselves surprised by sudden tears and melancholy a decade down the line, are going to haul out their Blackberry and say: ‘Let’s see who has posted comments of sympathy on timesofmalta.com in the last hour’?
Get a grip, everyone.
This is the internet equivalent of those vultures who flock to funerals wearing some shabby outfit they’ve pulled out of the back of their wardrobe – anything as long as it’s black – and who stand about on the parvis after the ceremony, chatting and smiling and greeting each other in loud voices.
They are completely oblivious to the pain of the real mourners, who would probably like to mow them down in their haste to get away from the inane expressions of ‘grief’, the idiotic chattering and the faux-sad faces like something out of a film of a Sicilian mafia funeral.
Golden rule: if you feel no real compassion or respect for those left behind or for the one in the coffin, don’t go to the funeral. It’s not a party or a wake.
I rarely go to funerals myself because when I do, I am unnerved by fresh insights into the seediness of human nature. All that’s missing on the parvis are waiters with trays of drinks.
I am left in no doubt that 50 per cent of the congregation are there only to be seen, or because they feel they ‘have to be’ there (tal-obligazzjoni) and not because they care. The height of shoddy vulgarity is those people who pop into the service biex jiffirmaw and then shoot back out again.
Imagine actually pretending to the family that you were at the funeral when you were not, and not being ashamed to do this in front of a whole crowd of witnesses who see you signing the register and leaving immediately, precisely because in your mind this sort of behaviour is acceptable.
The register at a funeral service is a register of attendees. It is not a book of condolences. It is there so that the family can thank you personally for taking the trouble to come to the funeral – and it is the pits of bad manners and deceit to pretend to have been at the funeral when you were not.
So very Maltese: other people’s sorrow as public entertainment or a social duty. Or worse – yet another opportunity to show off.
This article is published in The Malta Independent today.
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Very good article, Daphne, thanks for posting it.
http://www.johnpisani.net – this website gives a lot of detail on different accidents. In Gennie’s case, the journalists were prevented from taking photos of her lying on the ground (thank God, since it would have been a shock, especially for those who know her).
This website also carried photos of Cliff Micallef lying on the ground dead a week ago – and it made me sick when I came across them.
May both Cliff and Gennie rest in peace, and their families’ privacy respected throughout this tough time.
Thanks for the article. I wasn’t aware that this took place! Jenny was a very close friend of mine for many years and till today I am trying to come to terms that she is not around anymore. We miss her sadly. Cant believe the cruelty of journalists and yes, it would have shocked me if photos would have been published! Unbelievable!
Very true. There’s another thing. TV and radio stations (both Super One and NET) have taken to adding ‘sad’ background music whenever they report anything tragic. Highly annoying, and quite defeats the purpose of their job – which is to produce a news report rather than some sort of requiem.
That said, the dynamics of mourning – and I dare say grief – have changed very remarkably in recent years, in Malta as elsewhere. I’d go for the good old stiff upper lip (which leaves room for private grief of course), but these aspects of culture can and do lend themselves to fashion.
Now wait for Xarabank to enter the scene.
So, so true. One thing you did not mention is the condolence book which is signed in the church. I have actually been asked to fake somebody’s signature once, because he could not attend the funeral.
However, what I also find is in bad taste are eulogies from the pulpit when family members go on to make speeches and you get the feeling that this is not about the deceased but about them instead.
That all depends on what is said and how it’s said. I dread those endless sermons that go on and on about choirs of angels and god’s greatness without saying anything personal about the deceased. On the other hand, I’ve heard a few people speak about someone they’ve lost and can’t fault them for it in any way. What would normally have been a ritual and maybe indifferent mourning of death became a commemoration of the person’s life.
Put it this way – wouldn’t you prefer to be remembered as a living person rather than as a corpse in a coffin?
I for one get very incensed when timesofmalta uploads clips of car accidents on its portal. Why does the editor feel that he has to put up clips of mangled wreckage online? Doesn’t he for a moment think that the relatives and friends of the person/s would find this wholly insensitive and callous especially if their relative/s or friend/s lost their lives in the accident?
This custom is in all possible bad taste and reflects the downward turn that such an eminent news portal took ever since comments from readers started to be published. It looks more like a red top than a source of reliable news.
[Daphne – Many people apparently get off on this kind of thing. Google ‘car crash’ and you’ll see what I mean. It’s a whole area of obsession.]
Yes, I know such sites exist but I take offence when an eminence grise such as The Times of Malta stoops so low to pander to such gruesome ‘tastes’.
Why are you restricting this phenomenon to Malta? Perhaps you need to take a look at the media in the USA and UK for instance (which I’m sure you do), and which for some inane reason we consider worthy of emulation.
There are different types of newspapers geared to different markets. The bigger the photos, the lower the taste.
Do you really think you should be politicising something like this? There are limits, you know.
[Daphne – Did Super One do that, or didn’t Super One do that? Fact: it did.]
I think that’s what Daphne was pointing out – there are limits of decency which Super 1 TV doesn’t seem to acknowledge.
‘Twanny’ wouldn’t know the difference.
Super 1 tried to cover a serious accident – which is what any news organisation does. You are objecting simply because it is Super 1. So it it you who is introducing politics in this matter.
[Daphne – A riding accident is not a serious accident except for the people directly involved. It has absolutely no relevance to anyone else. It is not a coal-mining disaster, a landslide, an earthquake, or a plane crash. Classifying a fall from a horse resulting in one death as a ‘serious accident’ of national significance makes you somebody with a very small mind indeed, and it reveals Malta for what it really is: essentially a small town, but one with a village mentality. I am not objecting because it is Super One. I am objecting because it is done. I had similar things to say some years ago about media intrusion into the death of heroin addicts, pointing out that drug addiction does not strip a person of his or her right to privacy, even in death. I had always found this tseksik absolutely disgusting, but what pushed me right over the edge into fury was reports on the death of one particular young man, a private citizen and the son of private citizens, which described how and where his body was found, and various painful details that were of no use to anyone but caused major distress to his family. I pointed out that if somebody drops dead of a heart attack, nobody feels the urge to rush to the scene with cameras or ask around for ‘salacious’ details, and there is no reason that it should be any different in this case. There is a tacit agreement that suicides should not be reported because such reports are thought to encourage others. But I think they should not be reported in any case. It is NOBODY’s business. All people need to know is a statistic: how many suicides in a year, how many drug-related deaths in a year. They do not need to know the names and details.]
Same thing happened with Favourite TV journalists.
Can you expect any better?
Rather than just a very good article, it is a very good lesson as well. Good manners are most of the time being overridden by opportunistic attitudes, assuming the person doing this had good manners in the first place. Daphne, please write more articles about good manners. Perhaps, who knows, ‘one’ day certain people will realise that these manners actually exist.
You’re right 100%. When I lost my brother a few months ago I would have shot someone who came close with a camera but this morning I was told that there were other cameras of other TV stations. I really don’t know what to think – when you lose someone so close to you you’re really not thinking straight, and the TV stations need to have some sort of ethics in these sensitive cases.
Dear Daphne,
Thanks for finally writing about this. There is also another internet phenomenon taking place at the moment that is none other than a witch-hunt. The case is quite clear-cut and my sympathies lie square with the cyclist’s family (and basically against any form of reckless driving), but I find the email doing the rounds on the ‘murderer’ of Cliff to be in very bad taste, not necessarily towards the driver, but also to the victim and their respective families. Once again we are butting in and taking the law into our own hands. I m not sticking up for anyone here but we’ve turned towards hate mail to seek what some call justice. I would love to have your opinion on this.
[Daphne – I agree with you completely. I had planned to write about it for my Sunday column already.]
Yes, this is a very good article. Funerals are there as a last private farewell and to show quiet empathy with family and friends. They are not there for show, although I do believe that a wake at some point is a very good way to remember the person, and to deal with the mourning. The Irish do it and they are very good at it.
As regards the email doing the rounds, it is actually beneficial to the driver’s case. Now his lawyer, rightly so, can say that he has been tried by the public and any jury or judge will inevitably be biased or influenced.
I received it the day of the funeral, and I was full of rage when I saw it. I passed it on in a fit of anger, because Cliff was a good friend. I was angry at the guy, but I was angrier at those who have no idea how to bring up children. We let them do what they want, be what they want, buy them what they want. We let them get horrible disfiguring tattoos all over their arms, legs and neck, piercings galore, we let them drink themselves sensless……we really have no idea of self love and self respect.
Mario don’t generalise – most of our children are good, really good, citizens, and yes upbringing plays a good part in all this. As for the email, we don’t know who originated it, but what was shown on that email was all available to the internet-literate public. So the argument that the young man was tried on the internet does not hold water.
Quote Daphne: “So very Maltese: other people’s sorrow as public entertainment or a social duty. Or worse – yet another opportunity to show off.”
How true! Could not be more veritable!
The small-mindedness and crassness of some who call themselves journalists just gets my back up.
I wouldn’t be surprised that the “mealy-mouthed reporter” will be a somebody in the party in four years time.
I recall Ms Claudette Baldacchino recounting the Qrendi youths’ tragedy in Mdina Road, Zebbug: ” first I made sure that there were no relatives of mine among the victims”.
She may have been that egoistic, but she shouldn’t have told us about it on television.
Since you decided to bring up the death of the death of the five Qrendi youths just for political propoganda I would like to inform you that Claudette Baldacchino was in the forefront of the foundation ‘Hames Blanzuni’ and worked towards the memorial for these youths in Qrendi.
Furthermore if anyone insulted these families it was not Super One but Xarabank. When Peppi Azzopardi invited these parents to take part in Xarabank and used their children’s tragic death to promote ‘Il-Gwardjani Locali’. This programme ended up a ‘xalata hamallata’ as usual and the said parents had to sit it out seeing their tragedy turned into a comedy.
I don’t understand what’s so Maltese about this attitude. Italian TV stations (even those which once held respect) are all the time broadcasting ‘public confessions’ programmes, not to mention yellow journalism.
[Daphne – That’s voluntary. You choose to go on television and show off about your personal tragedy or drama. This is different. It’s an invasion of other people’s grief, against their will.]
A very well written article, Daphne. I agree wholeheartedly with the respect that should be shown to the family of the deceased. The only thing that disturbs me, however, is that you tend to condemn everything coming from the PL side of things.
It’s a real pity your blog wasn’t around in 1986 when pictures of poor Raymond Caruana lying in a pool of blood were being splashed around the island by the PN political machine!
[Daphne – Perhaps you think the public didn’t have a right to know about that? How can you compare the two.]
You know that the corpse was turned over and “arranged” so as to make a better pic? Or didn’t you?
[Daphne – I don’t think it matters. It served the important purpose of shocking people into their senses. The horrifying thing is not that the corpse was turned over for the photographer, but that there were almost as many people who voted for that state of affairs to carry on for another five years as there were who voted to end it all. If you or your parents or all of you were among those who voted Labour in 1987 – well, what you said with your vote then was ‘I love it. Let’s have more of the same.’ Now, that’s what I call questionable.]
The whole point of this article was to highlight the crassness of journalists (from the political spectrum or otherwise) who indulge in sensationalising violent death.
Excuse my not agreeing with you, but I see no difference between the two.
[Daphne – One was murder through political violence. The other was a riding accident. There is nothing in common – at all. If there is nothing in common between the two deaths, then logic tells you that no comparison can be made between the journalistic treatment of those two deaths. You might as well compare the journalistic treatment of the birth of a panda with the journalistic treatment of the launch of a new car.]
Twanny
That’s one of those Labour urban legends. How do you think forensics got a good look of the wound made by the bullet’s entry on his chin? And would you have expected the corpse to be carried around face downwards?
[Daphne – Thank you for that, Fausto. Had I said it myself, I would have been accused of ‘spinning’ (oh, how that love that outdated word). Those who remark on the body having been turned to face upwards don’t understand the merest basics of human psychology. A freshly killed person is still ‘alive’ in our minds and our first instinct when we see somebody killed before us is to turn that person over so that we can ‘speak’ to his face, and so that his face isn’t pressed into the ground. Some people totally lack imagination and the ability to empathise. So I ask them: what would they do if their friend or their brother were shot and killed in front of them? They would rush to the body and flip it over so that they can touch the face, almost certainly while shouting his name. You don’t ‘speak’ to the back of a person’s head.]
I think people don’t understand the pain of death unless it happens close to home. I hope to hell they don’t feel it, but it amazes me how incredibly insensitive they can be.
Thanks for writing the article Daphne….. Finally someone does understand.
You are absolutely right.
I feel that the so called Super One journalists feel a sadistic pleasure in filming such raw emotions, and yet a few months ago they revised their ethical rules – nother pie in the sky coming out of the Labour propaganda machine.
Your one-sided blinkers are comical.
[Daphne – One-sided blinkers would allow for uninterrupted vision from the unencumbered side.]
“Look at Facebook, where ……. and eating”. Facebook is already getting outdated. Twitter is the new thing where you update the whole word from your cell phone. This is the new concept of exhibitionism. People who should know better are twittering the whole world of what they are doing. Jurors are twittering about a court case judgement before the judge himself is made aware of the judgement.
I agree with you that this whole concept of writing a comment on timesofmalta.com when someone dies is pathetic. Even ex-MPs post comments like these. Is it a PR exercise to notify other Maltese that they still exist? People seem to be afraid of being left out. I remember that when Karl Chirchop died, most political activists felt the need to write something, and to add insult to injury they had to identify the club/kazin/ghaqda to which they belonged.
[Daphne – A sort of on-line and very public book of condolences…]
…………..and then, of course, receiving communion to make sure most of the congregation knows they’re there. So false.
But certainly nothing would beat the (supposedly) chief mourner walking around the attendees after a funeral mass, acting as though he were at a wedding or similar.
Well said.
Even worse than popping into the church to sign your presence is when they also sign for others who couldn’t even be bothered to pop in themselves. Some people do not miss an opportunity to show their shallowness, including others who have it all planned to turn up 45 minutes after the church service has started, and make sure that they are seen by the grieving family as they exit church.
And another thing: why are TV crews allowed in the church during the funeral of some ‘personality’, prying with their close-ups on the suffering faces of the wife, children and relatives of the deceased? This irks me terribly and it just turns the whole ceremony, which should be a private gathering of grieving people, into another news item.
Is it possible that the news directors of the TV stations are so devoid of sensitivity and sensibility, as not to notice their indecent presence? I appeal to the church authorities to take the initiative and forbid the filming of funerals, unless it is a head-of-state or top gun of the country.
[Daphne – Yes, I agree with you about those television cameras at funeral services. It’s reprehensible. They know that no family member is going to get up and make a scene, and they also know that with all the trauma they have been through in the last 24 hours, the last thing they would have thought of is engaging security guards to keep the cameras away. The priests are the ones who can stop it, and they should. They should take a moment before the service begins to ask journalists to stand outside the church. What next in this pushing of boundaries – going to the cemetery and filming the coffin going into the ground?]
“What next in this pushing of boundaries – going to the cemetery and filming the coffin going into the ground?”
Frankly I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet!
Just impossible to even think of the trauma of it all, then someone approaches you to ask how you are feeling? Just imagine – your child has just been killed and along comes a “journalist” to ask for a photo.
[Daphne – In that situation, people are so dazed that they will comply. They will even speak to the press. And that’s why it’s crucial for trusted friends to close ranks around them and keep the press away.]
It seems that some Super One journalists are able to be on the scene of accidents very shortly after, and sometimes even before, the police and ambulance get to the spot. Are they being tipped by someone in the control room? Is this acceptable?
[Daphne – To your questions: Yes. No – it’s grounds for dismissal.]
So true. These people should be ashamed. Super One going to film the scene …
We should revert back to the good old days when people who die are thrown in the “MIZBLA” and noone hears about them anymore. No reports in the paper, news, internet, no funeral books, not even a funeral. We should all learn from Dr. Gonzi’s uncle about good manners and ethics.
Is this comment a joke?
No, I think he/she is mentally challenged.
No. Herbs is.
@Herbs. What’s the relevance of your comment? A stupid effort to defend ill-mannered people?
I am defending no one. I just want to show these half a dozen people who are throwing such a big hoo-haa because super one went to film just after the incident … such ill-mannered people these labourites … that in the past other things have happened and noone bothers to throw a big hoo-haa anymore.
Anyways apparently it was a stupid comment so don’t bother replying next time!
Herbs: It isn’t just half a dozen people and it isn’t just this one incident.
Filming dead people and their grieving relatives is intrusive at any time. Doing so just after the person has died and while the body is still on the ground is beyond despicable. This wasn’t the first time and, unfortunately, it probably won’t be the last.
For your own sake you really shouldn’t be so defensive about such criticism. There’s absolutely no reason for you to imagine that TV cameras will never invade *your* privacy at an equally awful time.
Being a member of a religious community is a voluntary decision but once taken one has either to obey its rules or get out – very similar to a club.
So if some people decided not to remain members of the Catholic Church (as was their right), then it would have been an insult to them to bury them on Catholic consecrated grounds.
I think that this is a very simple concept but some people tend to forget it and put up the sensational word “mizbla” as if these were buried at the Maghtab landfill in a bid to impress others.
[Daphne – Yes, you’re quite right. People forget that the Addolorata is a CATHOLIC cemetery and not the Maltese national cemetery. The cemeteries in villages are also Catholic. If you are not a Catholic, you have a problem, unless you can obtain permission to be buried in an Anglican or Orthodox cemetery. You won’t get permission for interment at the Muslim and Jewish cemeteries. This burial business is pretty much like the situation with marriage prior to introduction of civil marriage, when you had no choice but to marry by the Catholic or Anglican rite.]
The Addolorata cemetery is a public cemetery administered by the Ministry of Health. It is not owned or administered by the CATHOLICS. The Ministry states that everyone is eligible to be buried there. Indeed, many non-Catholics are buried there every year. The unfortunates of the “mizbla” have now been incorporated within the grounds of the cemetery. The mizbla episode is one the most reprehensible and shameful acts perpetrated by the local Catholic church.
You may recall it was all about mortal sin and interdiction for reading a newspaper of a particular political party, or for voting for that party, or for being a member of some committee of that party. Abominable. Meddoc proposes “a very simple concept”, but it was not as simple as that. It was not a question of “some people decided not to remain members of the Catholic Church” but a question of these people being given the boot against their wishes by said compassionate Church. It was a question of gross and unjustifiable interference by Bishop Gonzi in matters of State. It had nothing to do with religious dogma or with the rules of the Vatican club. It was a local concoction. The reverberations of those iniquitous times are still felt to this day. I remember being asked in the confessional as a young teenager (with no vote – maybe it was my newly-broken deep voice) who I was going to vote for. Tal misthija.
Meddoc says “some people tend to forget”. Well, Meddoc, some people haven’t forgotten, and neither are some people impressed at your attempt to defend the indefensible.
[Daphne – This business of the relative authority of the local Curia and the Vatican foxes me. When the local Curia acts, doesn’t it act opn behalf of the Vatican? And I wonder, too, at the fixation that both the local Curia and the Vatican (are they one?) develop with individual cases, almost like a personal vendetta. Booting people out of the Catholic Church is still used as a threat. As I recall, it was used some days ago as a warning against Italian MPs when the introduction of the abortion pill on the Italian market came up for the vote. And wasn’t it used against the current US ambassador to Malta? I suppose this is a legitimate act by a club against its members: don’t follow the rules and we’ll throw you out. But then again, it undermines completely the essential message of Christianity, which is charity, love for one’s fellow man, and forgiveness. This undermining of the Christian message was nowhere clearer than in the denial of a funeral mass to Piergiorgio Welby in Italy a couple of years ago.]
I understand that a local Curia enjoys a certain degree of autonomy, and also that the Vatican was not overjoyed with Gonzi’s goings on with Mintoff. I also understand that it was Vatican pressure that eventually forced Gonzi to rescind his draconian measures – without the Mintoff camp ever having to retract anything or go to Canossa.
Another thing I can’t abide is the way people get lost. “I lost my husband . . . ” Where – in a bloody supermarket? People die for chrissake, they don’t get lost.
And something else I find sickening in obituaries. “He leaves to mourn his loss . . X . Y. Z. …. and his nephews and nieces, amongst whom The Reverend etc.” They single out someone they reckon brings them reflected glory, and leave out the rest of the ‘underachievers’.
[Daphne – I always say ‘die/died’ and can’t understand why people bridle and respond by using ‘passed away’. And while on the subject of obituaries, how about that ‘she/he leaves to mourn her/his loss her/his beloved husband/wife’? Do the living spouses fully understand what is being said here – that they were beloved by the one who died, rather than the one who died was their beloved? I suppose it has something to do with the way death announcements are written in Malta. Rather than ‘Joe Borg, (beloved) husband of Dolly and father of John and Mary’, it’s ‘Joe Borg- He leaves to mourn his loss his wife Dolly and children John and Mary’ which leaves the problem of how to convey that the one who has died was beloved by those who are still alive.]
And what about those “nephews and nieces” when they mean “grandchildren”?
Following the demise of a well know personality, an acquaintance of his wrote that he did not, as many others do, stab people in the back. (letters to the editor – Times 1st August). This is hardly an appropriate comment to be written in an appreciation.
No, he stabbed them in the front.
What’s the relevance of your comment? A stupid effort to defend one-mannered people?
Do you feel the same about those interviews with family members of the recently deceased? It tends to happen when something terribly tragic occurs or when the person is well-known. Some see it as a tribute to the memory of the person who just died and many family members seem particularly willing to share their fond memories with journalists even hours after their husbands/wives/children have died. Is this just sadism as well or is a healthy way of grieving and paying tribute to a loved one? I, myself, haven’t decided.
[Daphne – People are incapable of making sensible decisions which they will not live to regret in the immediate aftermath of a death. They are easily manipulated, and should be left alone. Whenever I read/hear the comments of a grieving relative a few hours after a death, I think that they don’t even know what they are doing or saying, that they are swimming through confusion. Conversely, when I read/see an interview about a dead person, some time after the death, I think either one of two things depending on the tone: either that this relative wants the person to be remembered and commemorated (usually in the case of a parent talking about a child) or that the person giving the interview wants acknowledgement himself/herself and is showing off (usually in the case of a spouse, more distant relative, friend, and so on).]
I don’t think the problem is with Twitter, Facebook, or condolence books as such, but with the way we’re using them. We’ve just lost all sense of ethical behaviour, and we make no distinction between private and public domains (in the broadest sense of the word).
I agree totally. It’s a bit like a father of three announcing to the world (on Facebook,naturally) that he is no longer with his wife, with no concern about the effect that would have on his children’s privacy.
[Daphne – I suppose it was his way of letting the ‘girls’ (aged circa 40 or 50) know that he’s back on the market again. Xi dwejjaq ta’ nies.]
I can’t agree more with your article, Daphne. Journalists should never be allowed at the scene of accidents. They shouldn’t have been there to report any car accident, any motorbike or motorcycle accident (ironically they do so even when there are no fatalities!), any horse accident or any accident whatsoever including those where people fall from heights and so on.
I just wonder why Cikku l-Poplu feels the need to be informed of other people’s mishaps.
[Daphne – Do you remember when Diana Princess of Wales died and there was universal condemnation for the photographers and reporters who tried to sell pictures of her last moments in the car or descriptions of what she looked like and her supposed last words? There were no buyers for those pictures. It was considered too reprehensible, too disgusting. And yet she was the most ‘public’ figure the world has ever known. Yet here we consider it acceptable to do this to private citizens – as though the fact that somebody likes cycling or another person likes riding makes their deaths of national significance and a subject for nationwide gossiping.]
Suicides aren’t reported after all. Should be the same for the rest.
It’s not only Super One. I once phoned Net News to complain about something similar.
[Daphne – Good for you.]
At last somebody expresses publicly what many people feel when they attend funerals. Sometimes it is just a charade and a show off. I envy those who have a private funeral attended only by those nearest and dearest.
However there is a plus point. A few years ago the Curia had given instructions on how a funeral mass is to be celebrated. One of them was that the celebrant should not ‘sing the praises’ of the deceased during the homily. When adhered to, this policy helps to respect the deceased and his family. On a light note (but very true). I once attended a funeral and the priest, who did not know the deceased from Adam (but was a very good friend of one of his children), attributed and praised a virtue of the dead grandfather. To those who knew him closely, it was his weakness and not his virtue! We couldn’t help but smile at this gaffe, even though it was a sad occasion.
Going off at a tangent, I suppose – some years ago a Maltese registered ship went down. Some bright spark at Super One radio equated Maltese-registered with Sea Malta. Since at the time Sea Malta only had two ships, the M V Zebbug and the M V Pinto, and since the M V Zebbug was moored at Marsa that day, Super One gave us the “breaking news” that the MV Pinto had sunk. You can Imagine the anxiety caused to the families of those on board.
That wasn’t the only gaffe of its kind. They’ve also been known to raise false hopes. Why let facts get in the way of a good scoop, never mind if it turns out to be a damp squib at best?
I’m a beloved (probably) husband and father of two, but I’m alive.
What surprises me about this entire unsavoury episode is not so much that a TV crew would have gate-crashed the scene of the death, but that the editors would have seen fit to display the ensuing unpleasantness in the way that they did. Door-stepping grieving families is, for good or for bad, what reporters do all over the world and is hardly the preserve of Super One Television.
Here is a passage on the “death call” from The Universal Journalist by David Randall:
At one extreme is the idea that the public gas a right to be told all the details of an incident (including the minutiae of a victim’s life). Anything less is regarded as pussyfooting around. If that means bothering the newly bereaved goes the argument, then so be it. The most insensitive case I know of involved Los Angeles Examiner city editor, Jim Richardson. According to the biography of sportswriter Jim Murray. Richardson once ordered reporter Wayne Sutton to call the mother of a murder victim:
‘Don’t tell her what happened,” he instructed, ‘tell her that her daughter has just won a competition at Camp Roberts. Then get all the information on her.’ Sutton did as instructed, and the mother happily confided her daughter’s life story. Then Sutton put his hand over the mouthpiece. ‘Now, what do I do?’ he wondered. Richardson looked at him wickedly. ‘Now tell her,’ he purred.
This kind of account is easily matched, I think, by Super One’s vile act of intrusion, which cannot even claim the fig-leaf of providing any kind of journalistic value. Indeed, what seems particularly offensive about this incident, is not so much the initial indiscretion, but the after-the-fact attempt to smear the family by showing and editorially condemning their emotional and justifiably angered reaction.
If this does not qualify for a rebuke, or even punitive action, from broadcasting authorities, then what should?