The involvement of sex does not make something private
Andrew Azzpardi, a senior lecturer at the University of Malta, who says that the press should have covered up for Cyrus Engerer
This is my column in The Malta Independent today.
When I see that even a senior lecturer at the University of Malta can’t think straight on some crucial issues, I am distressed at the thought that there can be scant hope his students might see things the proper way.
Andrew Azzopardi lectures in the university’s Department of Youth and Community Studies and his opinion is sometimes sought by journalists because he hosts a radio show and writes a blog and therefore falls into the category of social commentator.
Yesterday, he gave his opinion to The Times on the matter of privacy of public figures. That opinion makes so little sense that it has inspired this column.
Azzopardi claims that there is no public interest justification for reporting on the criminal prosecution of a politician “over a personal matter”.
“My take on this one is as clear as crystal, no, and I am adamant on this one. It is definitely not up to anyone to dig into people’s life, be it journalists, opinion leaders, bloggers or anyone else,” he wrote. “It will only take a different dimension in exceptional circumstances when an individual’s behaviour can be clearly linked with his/her public duties and until that is unambiguous we are in duty bound by discretion and unadulterated prudence.”
Dr Azzopardi’s thinking is confused in the extreme, not least because he starts out by referring to politicians and then widens his justification to “people”.
No sane person would suggest that the press has a right or duty to dig into the private lives of ‘people’. The private lives of private people, for a start, are protected at law.
The law does not permit you to report even cast-iron facts about private persons, unless they have done or said something to temporarily divest them of their right to privacy, like commiting a crime, facing police prosecution for a crime, or entering the forum of public debate with their views and opinions, seeking to be heard.
What we are talking about here is politicians, and Andrew Azzopardi is disingenuous, if not plain stupid, to categorise them simply as ‘people’, like the grocer or the woman next door.
Politicians are not just public figures, but they are a special class of public figure which lays them open to even greater scrutiny than ordinary public figures. This for the very obvious reason, though it is clearly not obvious to at least one senior lecturer at the University of Malta, that politicians ask for our votes and demand that we allow them to represent us in parliament or council.
This means that we have to know exactly who and what they are and what they are doing (in Maltese – ‘xi jsarfu’).
I’m going to bring up the subject of Robert Musumeci yet again, because it is the perfect example of just why electors should be told what the people who ask for their votes have been up to or are up to at present.
When Musumeci was presented to electors on the Nationalist Party ticket in 2008, it was as a decent man who had just started a family with the nice young fellow architect to whom he was married.
A few of us knew that he was at that time conducting an adulterous affair with a married magistrate, without the knowledge of either her husband or his wife, and that the magistrate, to confound matters still further, was and still is much enamoured of the Labour Party, a situation which was likely to create divided or at least confused political loyalties.
But the electorate did not know this. All they saw was a fresh, youngish candidate with a lovely wife and a baby, and that is what they voted for. They did not vote for a liar and a cheat who was busy committing adultery with Magistrate Consuelo Herrera, who was also cheating on her husband while giving interviews to The Times explaining how she takes him tea in bed every day.
Fortunately, not enough people voted for Musumeci to make him a member of parliament. But imagine if they had done so, and then Musumeci had done what he did just a few months later, leaving his wife and baby to set up home with the magistrate in question, who also left her husband for the purpose.
Imagine if those who thought they had nominated a straight up-and-down family man to represent them in parliament found out that they had been conned into nominating a liar and cheat instead.
Robert Musumeci was free to conduct himself any way he pleased, but not while presenting a false front to the electorate. Had he not been a political candidate, the matter would have been between him, his wife, his lover, her husband and all their children. But by asking the electorate to vote for him to represent them in parliament, he also brought electors into the equation.
Electors had a direct interest in knowing whether Robert Musumeci was a cheat. If the press has a moral dilemma with something like this, it is certainly not whether to break the news to the electorate, but whether the news should be broken to the hoodwinked spouses and children at the same time it is broken to the rest of the country.
I failed in my duty as a journalist at the time because the alternative would have been to fail as a decent human being.
Those who voted to make Musumeci their parliamentary representative would, had he been elected, have felt angry and betrayed. They would have felt exactly like those who voted for Cyrus Engerer are feeling now.
They thought they had voted for a clean, stable, business-like young man on the PN ticket, and now find that their representative on the Sliema local council is anything but.
For it is to the defence of Cyrus Engerer that Andrew Azzopardi, senior lecturer at the University of Malta, has sprung.
He thinks that Engerer should be able to raid his ex-lover’s computer for compromising sex pictures, email them to his ex-lover’s boss and workplace colleagues in an attempt at getting him sacked or at least into some kind of trouble, face prosecution for doing so, and still remain unmolested by the press.
The press, Azzopardi believes, should protect people in Engerer’s position from intrusion by the curious public.
God knows why The Times should ask a lecturer in youth and community studies for his views on these matters, instead of a lecturer in, say, journalism and media. Then they might have got the answer that the press is there to serve its readers (and radio and TV their listeners or viewers) and not to protect politicians from the consequences of their own daft or malicious behaviour.
Do electors have the right to know that a man who has asked them for their votes, who has already taken those votes to represent them on a council, who is slated to ask them to allow him to represent them in parliament in 2013, is facing criminal prosecution?
Yes, of course they do. This is so obvious that it is beyond dispute.
Do electors have the right to know that the man who stands before them asking for their votes is the sort who is capable of trying to exact revenge on a lover by getting him sacked from his place of work – for what other motivation could there be in sending his boss crude photographs of him engaged in strenuous and acrobatic sex with another man?
Yes, of course they do, and this should be beyond question but is clearly not to people like Andrew Azzopardi, who appear to believe that politicians have a right to present a false front to electors and that the press is obliged to protect those politicians in their presentation of that false front.
That Azzopardi’s thinking should be so muddled is worrying. He is unable to distinguish between what is truly private – a row between a politician and his wife, for example, on which the press has absolutely no right to intrude because there is no public-interest justification – and a serious act of malice which is open to criminal prosecution and which reveals most unsavoury facets of a politician’s character, as with the Cyrus Engerer case.
Azzopardi appears to operate under the delusion that when sex is involved, the issue is automatically private. This is absolutely not so. Sex is involved in the Cyrus Engerer case, but the public-interest argument has nothing to do with the sex.
We knew that Cyrus Engerer has sex with men and we still voted for him because we think that’s fine.
The real point at issue is the criminal malice and the frighteningly poor judgement, not the sex, and those are without question attributes which are directly relevant to his political life.
They are relevant because this matter tells us a great deal about how Engerer takes decisions. People do not have one set of decision-making skills for their private life and another set of decision-making skills for their public life. It is all of a piece, as his decision to swing to Labour overnight, to go from lauding Lawrence Gonzi to lauding Ronnie Pellegrini, has shown.
People like Andrew Azzopardi might live in a world where it is OK or just about understandable to try to get your lover sacked because he has dumped you, but fortunately, most of us don’t.
And if those people have asked us to vote for them, then we demand to know it, so that we can make a point of not doing so.
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With lecturers like this no wonder the university churns out people like Nakita.
[Daphne – Nakita didn’t even get in, John.]
Oh god. Andrew Azzopardi. Don’t get me started.
…………………the one who knows it all.
Really? And there was I thinking that’s where she picked up the plagiarism habit, and the what-the-heck attitude about it – ‘so what – everybody does it’.
Actually, plagiarism at the University of Malta has led to expulsions and is looked upon as a very serious matter, especially by the English Department.
They make it a point to repeatedly warn students that plagiarism will be punished, and they make them reference every fullstop and semi-colon that is not original.
I know of a student who nearly failed her dissertation because she forgot to quote-unquote a phrase.
Besides this opinion piece and all, he’s actually a pretty decent lecturer. At least in my experience.
Flawed reasoning, and I don’t just mean his. If he bases arguments on false premises, what does that say about the soundness of his intellect?
Someone should explain to him how a criminal offence is never a private matter.
So much so, Kenneth, that the police are still required to prosecute Cyrus Engerer ex-officio even if Marvic Camilleri were to drop his case.
A criminal case once instituted cannot be withdrawn but the case will probably collapse if the complainant fails to turn up or fails to give evidence against the accused person.
Anke meta taghmel dnub (ghal min hu Kattoliku), trid tqerru ghand qassis ghax meta tidneb tkun inqast lis-socjeta, jew ghallinqas hekk ghallmuni fil-lezzjoni tar-religjon…..
This guy cannot even write his opinion without going off track and making loads of mistakes. The UoM should sack him.
The last time I heard him speak he was calling the person questioning him ‘injorant’!
Oh he’s full of himself all right. Expert in one of those hard-to-pin-down subjects – youth studies something or other – which generate self-perpetuating permanent academic posts.
He was complaining – oh the irony – about his salary not being enough to cover his “research” effort, which, he said, he’s forced to do on weekends and such.
So blogging is now valid as peer-reviewed research, is it?
Were it so, Ciccio and I would be Pro-Rectors Emeriti Ad Vitam. And Daphne would be head of MIT, Harvard and Yale combined.
Well said Baxxter. I love these honorary titles.
Perfectly right – which buisness entity wouldn’t srutinise the private life and life style,of any candidate applying for a sensitive position within their company?
So it is in our interest to know all about, even the private lives, of those who come knocking on our doors asking us to entrust them with the well-being of our families and our country.
What I don’t agree with you is when you said that no one should “dig up in people’s private life ” on the contrary we SHOULD know all there is to know even about their private lives before voting them into such important positions.
[Daphne – Silvio, read it again. I said that no one should dig into the private life of private persons. It is, in fact, against the law.]
If they don’t pass the test they should refrain from exposing themselves to the public.
Irrespective of what any professor says experience has always taught me that a person’s private life is reflected in most of his decisions, right or wrong.
Yes you are perfectly right, sorry. I attributed what he said to you.
Silvio Berlusconi is of the same opinion, it’s why any journalist worth his salt walks out of his newspapers and TV stations every other week.
This man believes that democracy belongs to the fatuous, crowning the media in its place. He would obviously carve the role of confidant for himself.
I’m sure I missed it somewhere, so excuse my laziness for not looking, but why is she being referred to as Nakita if her name is Nikita (I think) ?
[Daphne – Her real name is Nakita. http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20050703/letters/australian-pink-floyd-concert.85336%5D
With regards to your article, once again, you find yourself trying to drum the ever so obvious into people’s minds.
Your persistance is admirable. Most of us would have given up trying to convince the rest.
[Daphne – ‘Your persistence is admirable’. I read Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando for inspiraction: http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2011/08/17/jeffrey-pullicino-orlando-sums-up-his-attitude-and-that-of-the-labour-party/ ]
She owes her name to this song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKmXRwjWYUM
I totally agree with what Judy Nadler and Miriam Schulman have written in this article with regards to the personal life of politicians.
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/focusareas/government_ethics/introduction/personal-lives.html
Nice reference, Thomas. Thanks
I’ll put in another to complement:
http://www.poynter.org/uncategorized/1613/good-decisions-and-great-journalism-the-marriage-of-ethics-and-craft/
so let’s hold the media accountable to the public: primarily they have to inform and educate with compassion
Aren’t those exactly the high standards Manuel Cuschieri tried to maintain with “Tajjeb Tkun Taf?”
Malta Today’s service to its readers:
http://loubondi.blogspot.com/2011/08/this-is-not-15-october-1979.html#more
Now wait for one of those video blogs by Saviour Balzan, full of sick language towards Lou Bondi.
This must be a first. I never heard that newspapers go on holiday.
I didn’t notice there was no Malta Today. I am still ‘reading’ the last issues of Taste (issued 11 days ago) and The Sunday Times.
Salvu Balzan”s stinginess with his employees is legendary. Was the day off he gave his employees paid or unpaid leave?
With senior lecturers like this twit, who needs universities.
As one of my late lamented Royal University of Malta professors used to say fifty years ago : ” Dejjem ibaxxu l-habel” .
It now seems that they have done away with the habel altogether.
Mr. Azzopardi will have a guaranteed job in the new university that Joseph Muscat will open some time after 2013.
He doesn’t need one. He’s already got a guaranteed job at the University of Malta. Come 2013 he’ll get his own gritty, hard-hitting talk show on PBS. Mark my words.
Baxxter, do you remember Emy Bezzina’s Spark, program socio-edukattiv u ma nafx xhiex? Xi haga hekk?
No I don’t, but I can picture it.
These sociology types are among the most pretentious mercenaries in Malta’s intellectual scene.
Never mind the bullshit about restructuring our economy and increasing the UOM’s research output (hello? Professor Richard Muscat? ding dong?).
Look at the latest academic vacancies at the Malta university, and you’ll be sure to find the obligatory youth/elderly/community/labour relations/sociology academic chair. Top posts in government departments? Look no further.
The worst of it is they have the PM’s ear.
Do we need all these experts in sociology for a population of 400,000?
Are they producing useful research? Are they helping to mould a better society? Surely not.
Look at Numero Uno on a Saturday night and you’ll get my point. A nation of ignorant freeloaders with no sense of aesthetics.
I have really lost all faith in Andrew Azzopardi. I cannot even believe what he wrote.
Phew, I am soooo glad you wrote this. I was going to burst a vein yesterday shouting at my monitor as I read his drivel.
Almost as bad as his inane radio interviews.
Daphne, what is it with some academic people who are unable to distinguish right from wrong?
In the US, politicians are subjected to intense media scrutiny on every aspect of their lives.
If politicians ask me to trust them with my precious vote than I want to know everything about them and I expect the journalists to do their duty.
One other thing. In my book if a man cheats on his wife, then he is not to be trusted at all. In my business dealings I want to know who I am dealing with let alone trusting my future to a politician who I do not identify with.
.
Dr Azzopardi seems to be in need of a refresher course in Youth and Community Studies.
I wonder how certain academic staff cope with the research work they should be doing, mentoring the hundreds of students, reading, correcting and preparing exam papers/thesis/long esssays and also have their own radio shows and appear on TV every other day.
Come to think of it, that’s why they always appear on TV with unshaven faces, and smell.
With that student population full time lecturers have enough on their plate. As far as I know if this guy has a PhD he should publish at least once every three years.
He should publish at least three times a year.
Maybe the rules should be changed and instead of publishing, academics could broadcast phone-in programmes on Radju Malta. Doesn’t that fall in the category of research and instant publi/shing/city?
I am so sick and tired of this stupid mentality that these amateur politicians in Malta have.
You cannot do what you like if you re a politician. You are a public figure whose thought processes determine the future of our country.
When you make rash, immature, miscalculated choices in your life, no matter how private they are, then they reflect how you think at work too.
When politicians do not behave the way a politician should, then it is evident that they have no respect for the position they hold and the people they represent.
If politicians were not held to higher standards of behaviour then they could do what they liked and never take any responsibility.
During the elections in Scotland a candidate got fired for using the term “coffin dodgers” on Twitter. That is how high those standards are. And when it comes to sex………..we all know what happened to Bill Clinton.
Any politician who is parochial-minded in thinking that the way he conducts his life is no one’s business has no business being elected.
Andrew Azzopardi went down in my estimation since I heard him confusing matters on a TV talk-show.
With lecturers like these, getting all defensive when someone rubs them the wrong way, it’s no wonder that some students come out of tertiary education with no sense of ethical behaviour.
Perhaps this country has become far too tertiary education minded for anyone to realise that a degree gets one somewhere in life but not everywhere when one lacks the basics.
Basics as in learning how to express the argument without the need to ‘group in the group’ and to ‘lick’ people, this obviously to defend one’s position. Education is a life long journey and not a destination.
Consequently we require people to clean up that university to stop this mentality from spreading further as it is being passed on to students who will eventually become like Dr Azzopardi, so God help us then.
I think that the correct Maltese term is “x’jissarrfu”.
[Daphne – I don’t know. The way I know it to be pronounced, it has one ‘s’.]
The rest of the article, is, as usual, spot on.
“Xi jsarfu” is correct. I don’t think “x’jissarrfu” could refer to people. Daphne is correct.
Here’s my penny’s worth:
“xi jsarfu” is said when we question “Xi jsarfu dawn il-banek, flus biss jew cekkijiet ukoll?”
“Jissarfu” is said like in the answer for the above question : “F’dan il-bank jissarfu cekkijiet biss”
“xi jsarrfu” hi t-tajba…il-verb hu saRRaf.
Andrew Azzopardi should read this, forsi jitghallem xi haga dwar kif socjeta’ evoluta tirraguna:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,780531,00.html
That is called omerta.