How Labour believes its own propaganda

The most successful propagandists are careful not to fall into the trap of believing their own lies or swallowing their own propaganda.

But unfortunately, the Labour Party attracts to its ranks the less intelligent in our midst, which is why it feels the need to publicise their academic achievements in full knowledge that their IQ is not immediately apparent.

So anyway, yesterday evening I was seated in the press box at the Nationalist Party’s public meeting in Sliema, with my notebook and pen and my spectacles on, listening to what the speakers had to say and taking notes. The speakers – Ivan Bartolo of 6PM, merchant shipping law practitioner Anne Fenech and former Bank of Valletta chairman Joseph Zahra – made some excellent, sharp observations about Malta’s economy in respect of what is happening elsewhere, and the risks inherent in taking it all for granted instead of linking it to good/bad choices by governments.

I noticed that the Super One reporter – Anthony David Gatt – wasn’t writing a single thing, because he wasn’t there as a reporter but as a propagandist. Instead, he was doodling on his notebook and making mouth-shrugs.

Then I noticed that instead of concentrating on what the speakers were saying, he was using his mobile phone to film me. In these situations, you can’t do anything. If you ask them to stop, they film you asking them to stop and then broadcast that. If you put up your hand to cover their phone, they do the same thing. If you get up and leave (and why should you, anyway?) they film that, and if you use the choice expressions they deserve, they record that and put it on a loop on prime-time television.

And they think they’re smart. Of course, the thrilling footage of a 48-year-old woman in spectacles, jotting down notes while seated on a fold-out chair, was on Super One yesterday night, with the breaking news that FIL-MEETING SPIKKAT IL-PRESENZA TA’ DAPHNE CARUANA GALIZIA.

Errrrr, yes. I was in the press box. With the press. Because, errrr, I work for a newspaper and have done so for 23 years. And I also write a blog about, among other things, politics, that probably has a bigger audience than Super One news.

But of course, Super One’s half-brainers have soaked up their own propaganda so deeply that they’ve forgotten I’m a journalist and now think of me as a politician.

Isn’t it ironic? They are the ones who are NOT journalists. They are the ones who are politicians, working for a political party, but they think that it’s my presence – a political columnist with an independent newspaper – that jars and is out of place in a press box, at a political meeting.

Do they regularly host the Queen of Hearts and the White Rabbit to tea and tarts in the Super One newsroom?