US president Winston Churchill
US president Winston Churchill
You’d think that in Malta, of all places, people would be familiar with the key figures of World War II, or at least have their names and roles drummed into them at school if it doesn’t happen at home.
A couple of years ago, I was astonished to be told of a woman in her 20s – a postgraduate student in international realtions, if you please – who, when Benito Mussolini was mentioned in the course of a discussion, asked who he was.
Everyone else stopped dead, wondering whether she was joking around. She wasn’t.
Yesterday, The Times ran a photograph of Winston Churchill (shown here) and captioned it:
US president Winston Churchill did not know about secret plans to arm troops in Vichy France, according to newly unveiled documents.
I will not pass judgement on ‘newly-unveiled documents’, but I really feel like doing so. Project models, products, monuments and plaques are unveiled – because originally, and sometimes even today, they were literally covered with a veil or sheet which was whipped off at the unveiling ceremony.
Documents are disclosed, released or discovered, depending on the context. I can’t see how a document can be unveiled. So I have passed judgement, after all. Well, there you go. Reading the newspapers has become a hair-tearing exercise these days.
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US president?
United States (of America) president?
I can’t even excuse the writer for a typo – US instead of UK – because Churchill wasn’t president, but prime minister.
It would have taken only a short trip to Wikipedia, but who has time for that nowadays?
Wikipedia and the plethora of information sources available at the touch of a button is hardly the point.
Anyone who doesn’t know who Winston Churchill is should not be working at The Times (or be older than 10 years old for that matter), even if they are a graphic designer whose only textual input is captions.
Having a plethora of information available at the touch of a button is the main cause. No difference between Churchill and the ferry timetable.
It is unbelievable! I am MORE than sure that the editor knows who Churchill was.
I am sure that the management at The Times KNOW who Churchill was, but I am baffled by the sudden downgrading of this once first-class newspaper. What a pity! I think something has to be done.
When once in my work at The Times I misspelt a word in the heading, a board meeting was called and I had to explain why I had made that mistake.
And then the PN thinks that everybody remembers the untold havoc previous Labour governments had on this island. When we realize that PL (or MLP or whatever) will probably have cabinet members who already served under KMB and Mintoff, it is then that we should tear our hair out.
Does anyone check anything anymore at The Times?
It seems that The Times has spent all its money on the building and has none left over for proper staff and checks and balances.
Serves them right for thinking that Winston Churchill needs qualifying. Or maybe the comments board is taken to be a valid sample of readership.
“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” Winston Churchill quoting George Santayana.
Good thing you posted a pic of the printed paper. The online version has since been changed.
Quality standards at The Times have taken a nose-dive these past few years, and there seems to be no end in sight.
Perhaps, Mr Churchill was in cahoots with Messrs Zimmler, Hibbentrop, McGoering and Hilter to take over North Minehead and this is what the reported documents “unveil” … makes you wonder whether The Times newsroom people live by the adage “We don’t deliberately set out to offend. Unless we feel it’s justified” (Graham Chapman)
The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter —– or a two-minute glance at the comments-boards.
I would have thought that John Belushi’s plugging away at The Times Alla jahfirlu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lT1o0sDwI
Dare ‘The Times’, once rightly considered Malta’s leading newspaper, publish any article about accountability now?
Daphne I know you are a fan….Mad Men Season 5 will premiere next Sunday.
[Daphne – Quite a coincidence. I wondered about it only this morning. Go Stars and same time?]
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2012/mar/21/mad-men-is-back
And it’s TWO HOURS long! After a hiatus of 17 months I can’t wait.
The US premiere will be aired next Sinday night on AMC…. you will defenitely find it on the net on the follwing days.
GO Stars will air season 5 it in the coming months….
History is purely an invention, right? Unless documents (or newspapers) reveal otherwise. Who needs history, all that old stuff?
Who needs a general education anyway? Unless you want to excel at making money on “Kontra-Hin,” right?
Sadly, imagination and ignorance defy reason all the time; but it’s worse in politics – and seems to be getting worse in “journalism.”
Is this the fruit of all the money being spent on free education, free university and millions spent on stipends?
It is about time we had a rethink on all these taxes going to waste.
If I am not mistaken once you wrote that what counts is not what goes in our university, but what comes out.
Perfectly correct.
Mad Men starts this Sunday but not sure it will be aired on regular TV straight away in Malta.
If you have time you should watch this series called Boss – by Kelsey Grammer, it’s really good about the Mayor of Chicago.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1833285/
And for some good humour – Parks and Recreation tops them all.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1266020/
If Winston Churchill seems to be an “unknown” it is no wonder we Maltese World War II veterans have become a forgotten breed.
Mage, do you mean the eleventh world war?
Din daqs tas-suppositorju tajba.
Kellu ragun Tonio Fenech.
Pajjiz mizghud bic-cwiec.
Up to the Sixties, even Seventies, we were encouraged to read to increase our “general knowledge”, now much derided – both “reading” and “general knowledge” that is.
The students at one of the Arts courses at our Alma Mater had to read Bleak House and prepare a paper about various aspects of this novel.
Six of them pooled together and got York’s (or whatever) Notes (potted plot, potted characters, potted everything) and hired a DVD of the BBC drama series which they watched over weekend/s, plus forays into Wikipedia.
I wonder if they came within one hundred metres of the printed version of the novel because, for them, the book is “too long” and “boring ” (very much used words nowadays when the attention span runs into minutes, if not seconds).
The students even grumbled that this particular subject was not readily available on the “previous years” market. The lecturer got to know about it and yet accepted and marked their “cut and paste” papers.
[Daphne – I think the main problem there is not so much that Bleak House is too long or too boring, but that the vast majority of those students would lack the context for the subject matter. Nothing in their socio-educational background would have familiarised them with any aspect at all of 19th-century England, the way of life, the social structure, the manners and habits, even the manner of speech. It would be completely alien to them, and that’s why they have to resort, in their sheer bewilderment, to desperate measures. They just don’t know what they are talking about. Whenever I feel like being sympathetic to their plight, rather than angry about their incompetence, I try to imagine myself being asked to read a 19th-century Italian novel about some oblique aspect of Italian social life and then write an essay, in Italian, about it. I would have to resort to all kinds of desperate measures in my linguistic incompetence, lack of interest, and sheer indifference to the subject matter. The difference, of course, is that I would never have thought my poor skills sufficient to take a degree in Italian.]
“linguistic incompetence, lack of interest, and sheer indifference to the subject matter. ”
Completely agree with you. What are these ” students” doing at Uni if they do not have an enquiring and receptive mind set ?
In literature, do you know the difference between a mainstream book and a classic? A classic is a book that everybody talks about but no one has ever read.
I’m gonna get stoned tonight, but for sure I’ll be sober in the morning.
Not the same for The Times of Monaco – oops, sorry, Malta.
Now this:
The first imports of Maltese grown potatoes to the Netherlands have arrived in Tilburn at the Jansen Dongen BV, a Dutch company that specialises in the growing, packing and selling of potatoes.
Where is TILBURN?
There is no such place.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120322/local/maltese-potatoes-make-it-to-the-netherlands.412324
Perhaps “Tilburg” which is in the Netherlands ? It appears that the sub-editing at the Times is slipshod and the main aim is to get the news item online asap for their mainly inane “bloggers” (ahem !)
Tilburg.
Mhux xorta.
The way things are going, it seems that anyone who doesn’t know who Winston Churchill was SHOULD be working at The Times.
When I was a child my mother would only allow us to read The Manchester Guardian.
The other UK papers available in Malta were considered to be substandard.
Now, well into her nineties, her opinion of the the TOM can be summarised as ” Tistghu tghiduli min ghallimhom l-Ingliz lil dawn in-nies ?
This is out of context with this thread –
Mohamed Merah, the Algerian-born gunman who has recently terrorized France with his shootings has been described thus :-
French psychiatrist Serge Bornstein described Merah as a passionate idealist. “Everything was centred around his ego with outsized narcissism, impulsiveness and instability but at the same he was methodological and organised in his planning,” he told.
Remind you of somebody ?
Yes, but the guy I know cannot even handle a mobile phone let alone an AK 47.
The Times editors and proof readers should be charged with dereliction of duties.
This is now beyond the comical, it is tragic even more so for us seniors (but definitely not senile) who remember The Times under the watchful eyes of Mabel Strickland. She would personally inflict pain on an editor caught with such blatant negligence.
It now appears that The Times has abandoned minimum standards in reportage and will soon descend into the levels of Malta Today and Maltastar.
Soon? Make that already.
You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.
US President Winston Churchill
Winston, although your mum was a US citizen and Randolph was not the greatest dad, I apologise for the gaffe. The Times of Malta should be ashamed. I was taught this in 2nd year history for God’s sake.
Some people are surely deserving of the minimum wage…
Obama must be spitting with rage! Lanqas haqq nehha l-bust ta’ Churchill mill-Oval Office
This headline is just as bad:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20120318/football/norwich-edged-out-of-premier-league.411733