Handbag terrorism

by Lou Bondi

This article is published in The Malta Independent on Sunday today.

Last December, Julia Farrugia, the editor of Illum, went to Comino, changed from her clothes into her swimsuit and jumped into the cold sea right in front of TV cameras.

For three days she stayed in a tent on Comino, braving cold weather, bad food and boring company. It was all captured on camera and transmitted to the nation as a reality TV show.

What could have possibly enticed Julia Farrugia to demean herself in such a manner?

Simple. She did it to raise money for Super One TV.

Three whole days of making a fool of herself so that the Partit Laburista station could help the Partit Laburista win the next election.

Take a step back and calmly assess this perverse picture.

Julia Farrugia, the deputy chairman of the Institute of Maltese Journalists, exposes her body in winter to help the Partit Laburista have a better propaganda machine.

The Institute of Maltese Journalists, which bills itself as the epitome of journalistic ethics and practice, finds no difficulty with its second highest official frolicking in a swimsuit on Comino in the interests of Joseph Muscat’s propaganda machine.

Look up the word ‘absurdity’ in the dictionary, and you will find Julia’s picture staring at you.

And yet, and yet, absurdity in Maltese journalism has now taken an even more weird twist. The Institute of Maltese Journalists condemned Daphne Caruana Galizia and her two sisters for “verbal and physical violence” against a Super One TV crew that kept harassing them after the first sitting of the court case with Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera.

Their crime? One of the sisters stuck her handbag in front of the Partit Laburista’s cameras – the same cameras that Julia Farrugia raised funds for.

Let’s get some facts straight.

First, Daphne Caruana Galizia is a journalist. You might agree or disagree with her views and her way of conveying them, but she is a journalist. Super One, on the other hand, is a propaganda machine and employs political propagandists, not journalists.

Their interest is not in informing viewers but helping Joseph Muscat walk up the steps of Castille in three years time. The same goes for NET TV employees and the PN, by the way.

In this scenario, a modicum of common decency and a dash of journalistic integrity should have steered the Institute of Maltese Journalists to stand by one of their own.

Instead, the Institute stood by the Partit Laburista’s hired guns that harassed one of their own and her two sisters.

But it gets worse. At the protest last Sunday, with thousands of angry people in front of him, the MUT’s John Bencini attacked Stephen Calleja, the managing editor of this newspaper.

Bencini raised his voice in vehemence, mentioned Calleja’s name twice and pointed an angry finger to the sky. The baying crowd approved. Calleja’s crime? He had interviewed UHM’s Gejtu Vella and merely reported his comments.

Did the Institute of Maltese Journalists rush to print to defend one of their own as they did on other occasions? Did Julia Farrugia rip off her clothes and jump in the cold sea in defence of press freedom? Not quite. She looked in the mirror to check her make-up and hair for five whole days after the incident before she issued a lame condemnation of Bencini’s words.

But there is more. She and her Institute buddies declared that they got off their arse and did something about Calleja’s incident only because they “received a complaint”.

So if a journalist gets beaten up and goes into a coma as a result, Julia et al would wait by the hospital bedside till he or she comes to and formally complains to them before they condemn the act. They should rename themselves the Benny Hill Institute of Journalism.

Secondly, in 1992 the Partit Laburista expelled the gang of violent thugs from its bosom. It was the best thing Alfred Sant ever did. But now the pendulum seems to have swung to the other side. Its party hacks are feigning to be New Age Ghandi pacifists of sorts.

One of Daphne’s sisters, a very slight women who tilts when it is windy, is accused of “violence” for putting her handbag against a Super One camera lens that kept harassing her sisters.

Oh, please. Have the men in the Partit Laburista gone from thugs to wimps? Has handbag terrorism become the new threat to the Partit Laburista’s media propagandists?

When Rachel Attard was covering the GWU protests in Valletta for Bondiplus last week, she was repeatedly harangued by the crowd. They called her a fake blonde, a whore and worse.

Did she burst out crying and run off to the Valletta police station to make a report? Of course not. Journalism is not for wimps. She politely smiled back and got on with her job.

Finally, I write the above with palpable discomfiture. I fear that even criticising the Institute of Maltese Journalists might give them a speck of credibility they do not deserve. Look at who the Institute’s officials are. The chairman, Malcolm Naudi, is no longer a journalist but a commercial propagandist.

Julia Farrugia, his sidekick, was last seen jumping in the cold December sea to raise money for the Partit Laburista’s TV station. Mario Schiavone is a ministerial PRO, not a journalist. Joe Vella was a GWU ‘journalist’ when it was part and parcel of the Partit Laburista during its most violent times.

He remains famous for hiding the ugly truth, not uncovering it. Charles Flores was a PBS ‘journalist’ in the 1980s, when the national station’s newsroom was just a cruel, lying propaganda machine in the service of the Labour regime. And Charlot Zahra works for MaltaToday, which is not a newspaper but a public vehicle for private envy.

This is the Institute of Journalists today – a motley crew that expects to be taken seriously when it accuses Daphne Caruana Galizia’s sister of violence because she put her handbag in front of a Partit Laburista camera.

Today, I stand with pride on the side of the handbag terrorist.