How can a newspaper have any claim to seriousness and credibility with an editor like this and with this kind of editorialising?
If there is anything or anyone in this equation who is ‘f**king sick’, it is Matthew Vella and the newspaper, Malta Today, which he edits.
What sort of newspaper editor uses language like that in an editorial under his own name in his own newspaper, and then goes on to repeat the same line three times like somebody who’s been hitting the Earl Grey between New Year’s Eve and today?
And as for the sanctimoniousness and the ‘they doth protest too much’ arguments – ridiculous, really, when this is Malta Today speaking.
Of course, what Matthew Vella is really cross about is that Malta Today couldn’t or wouldn’t run riot with the news itself because they too used Jo Said for all he was worth on the anti-GonziPN bandwagon which that newspaper shared so comfortably with the Labour Party.
They are as guilty as Labour, and their shame has been transformed into defensive aggression towards the person who has pointed it out.
Matthew Vella and his newspaper appear to have suddenly developed a concern for the families of those who are discussed in news reports or online blog-posts. From where, and why, did this concern miraculously materialise, suddenly? That newspaper has been targetting the same few individuals remorselessly for years, to the point where it can only be interpreted as a sick obsession. Far from showing the slightest concern for their families they have – as in my case – systematically gone after even members of their favourite prey’s families who are 100% private individuals.
Jo Said was not a public person, Matthew Vella claims. Ah, so that would be why the media – including Malta Today – tripped over themselves in the rush to record his views about the government, about corruption, and heaven knows what else. There was a time back then when you couldn’t open a newspaper or turn on the television without seeing him or hearing his voice.
This is Matthew Vella’s definition of a public person:
Said was not a public person. He did not occupy a public post. He was not facing criminal procedures over charges incurred in the public discharge of his duties, such as former judge Ray Pace.
How fascinating. That sounds pretty much like a description of me, but it hasn’t stopped Matthew Vella and his boss and owner Saviour Balzan from practically gluing themselves to my knickers and obsessing about me in print on a near-weekly basis. This is but the latest example. I’ve long thought they must have some kind of perverted fetish, but the real explanation must be – taking this man at his word – that they have mistaken me for somebody who occupies a public post.
Vella is wrong about the reporting of suicides – completely wrong. What he writes is just another myth like the ‘sub judice’ myth his boss and owner Saviour Balzan still believes holds true. Newspapers do not report suicides for the simple reason that suicides are not reportable events. When a private person jumps off a bridge or swallows a tub of painkillers and dies, that is not a news event. Private persons do not suddenly become public persons in the manner of their death (unless, of course, they are murdered and are drawn in to the news story by default). Fortunately, Maltese newspapers woke up to this fact quite early on.
I was one of those who argued, years ago, against the other miserable practice of reporting deaths by an overdose of illegal drugs in all their grisly detail, with names, on the same premiss: that the manner of a private person’s death does not make him or her public. Fortunately, that too has changed – but up until some years ago, if a junkie died of an overdose, his name, picture and conditions in which he died would be all over the newspapers. And I found it horrendous – because it was indeed horrendous.
So if I might address you directly, Matthew, and give you a simple lesson in basic journalism: suicides are not reported because they are not reportable. You would no more report the death of a private person by suicide than you would the death of a private person from cancer. But then this does not mean that the collective data is not reportable and should not be reported. On the other hand, it is extremely important that data on suicides with no personal details or names (as with data on cancer) is reported regularly for public consumption. This both because it is newsworthy and also because it is in the public interest.
It is important for the public to know how many people kill themselves in this country every year, just as it is important for the public to know what the incidence of cancer is, for the simple reason that we should be plugged into reality. Collective data on suicides in Malta is, in fact, reported from time to time, generally after a question in parliament.
Now on to the suicides of people in the news. These are reported in the news throughout the world’s democracies. It is taken for granted and nobody questions it because – and this should go without saying – to question it is to question the very spirit of news reporting itself. Matthew Vella and Malta Today appear to believe (and you can’t blame them, because many in Malta, an unevolved democracy, think the same way) that editors and the media are ‘gatekeepers’ who decide what information, to which they are privy themselves, other people can be allowed to have. Of course, I speak here of information that is not protected by means of data protection provisions and other laws.
People like Matthew Vella criticise the practice of censorship on the grounds that you cannot have a small coterie of adults deciding what other adults may see or read. And then they do the same thing themselves with news.
Vella and his newsroom think that it is quite all right for them to know that Jo Said, who they used so shamelessly in the 2008 general election (giving him a platform largely because he was a personal friend of one of the owners of Malta Today, Roger de Giorgio, and of his wife Josianne), killed himself, but that this information should be withheld from the public.
The tragedy is that it is they themselves who gave the public the right to know about the manner of Jo Said’s death, because they promoted him to the public as a serious, valid and legitimate critic of the Gonzi government, fending off all suggestions that he wasn’t quite well despite the hard evidence. Had they not done that, the public would have no right to know how he died and the manner of his death wouldn’t have been relevant. But it is actually directly relevant in a way that death by illness or in a car crash would not be.
One of the reasons they don’t want the public to know how Jo Said died is because they don’t want to have to admit that those who accused them of shamelessly using a man who was really quite ill were in fact right.
The facts are these: it served Malta Today’s purpose back then to portray Jo Said as just another normal person angry at ‘GonziPN’, and it serves that newspaper’s purpose now to cover up the manner of his death.
Matthew Vella likes to think himself liberal and progressive, but he is just another typical Maltese in his ambivalent values, with one set of standards for Malta and another for the rest of the world. If David Cameron or Ed Miliband were to kill themselves, it would be reported all over the British news in exhaustive detail, and even in Malta – presumably because reports of foreign suicides do not prompt Maltese people to copycat action. They have to be Maltese suicides for that to happen.
But then if Joseph Muscat or Simon Busuttil were to do the same – I hate making these comparisons, but the soundness of an argument has to be tested by taking it to its logical extreme – we are expected not to report it. Why? The prime minister or the leader of the Opposition killing himself is a MAJOR news story. It has huge public interest implications. How can it not be reported?
I suppose Matthew Vella envisages a ridiculous, pathetic situation in which – so typically, typically Maltese and the very reason I began writing a newspaper column in 1990 – you have to get your news by word of mouth because the newspapers decide to protect you from it. This happened most recently with the suicide of Judge Ray Pace, who was facing trial for bribery and corruption. The newspapers were full of stories that he ‘died suddenly’, without giving the cause, leaving the news to go round by spoken word instead. The reality is that they would actually have done right by him in reporting the truth, because what people felt was overwhelming compassion for his remorse and what it drove him to.
I thought long and hard before reporting the manner of Jo Said’s death, because of all these considerations. But whichever way I approached the issue, I could come to only one logical conclusion: that facts and news can’t be partial. The unfortunate thing is that the very people who should have reported the facts about his death because they were the ones who pushed him into the public eye in the first place, and so owed their audiences an explanation of the full picture – mainly the Labour media and Malta Today – have not done so to conserve their own credibility.
So it had to be me, who knew at the outset that Jo Said wasn’t well because he used to ring me routinely and repeatedly at all hours including the very early hours of the morning to the point where the police had to be involved, which was why I never colluded in the media myth of portraying him to the public as that which he was not, to inform the public of something which those others – Matthew Vella particularly – would like to have seen concealed.
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http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/blogsdetails/blogs/Share-this-if-you-think-this-is-fucking-sick-20140102
He seems to have changed the online headline.
Normally, when Matthew Vella writes something like this, he is serving as a smokescreen to his masters.
Daphne, why is it that you have to remind us every now and then that Saviour Balzan and his coterie at Malta Today are hypocritical opportunists masquerading as liberal journalists?
We already knew that since they have proved themselves many times over to be just that. Keep up the good work.
Liberal journalists reduced to permanent second thoughts on the validity of Labour’s government.
They’ll get there one day.
Basically, Matthew, if the fellow you had put on an anti-Gonzi pedestal commits suicide, it is only natural for one to wonder how much of what he said before the event can be counted on.
Which maybe explains why your rag would like to hush up this latest twist in this story, as it makes your past headlines look more questionable.
Jo Said was not presented as a “private person” by Malta Today here.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/Election-heckler-fined-5-000-for-defamatory-comments-against-minister-20120612
It says: “Jo Said enjoyed considerable airtime when he emerged as a a vocal critic of the Nationalist government.”
Shame on Malta Today for using Jo Said even after his death.
He’s changed the title. Auto censorship.
Apparently readers were sharing Vella’s piece because they thought his piece was “f*cking sick.” They took him literally: “Share this if you think THIS is f*cking sick.”
Pretty vile to expect the news to pass unnoticed, Jo Said was their main story for weeks.
And isn’t it pathetic how Vella insists on following this blog for an editorial?
I think that Matthew Vella achieved the diametrically opposite end of his intended aim with his piece.
On the other hand, you never provided sufficient “proof” that Mr Said was in need of psychiatric care. You implied it indirectly when you said that he phoned you at all hours of the day in the run up (if memory serves me well) to the 2008 elections. It’s true that he enjoyed his 15 minutes back then, but in 2013 he hardly remains what I would call a public figure.
[Daphne – All hours of the NIGHT, Reuben. Repeatedly. Incoherently. And actually ordering my husband, who took the phone at 1am, 2am, to put him through to me because he had to harangue me about corruption and who was my husband to take the phone at 2am in his own house? It reached police stage. That’s how I knew he wasn’t well. THAT’S why I knew how shocking and cynical the Labour Party’s use of him was – though I have to say I was even more disgusted by Malta Today’s use of him in its anti-Gonzi campaign, given that one of the owners of that newspaper, Roger de Giorgio, knew him well and had to have known about his problems.
Mr Said did not merely need psychiatric care. He was in psychiatric care. The reason he did not work was precisely this: he was receiving a disability pension because of psychological problems that rendered him unfit for work.
You say that I have not provided proof of this, but you are clearly not up to speed with events. I have no need to provide such proof: it was provided by others in a defamation suit (George Pullicino vs Joseph Said, as I recall) in the form of a report compiled for his disability pension.
It really upsets me to have to say these things at this ill-timed stage, but honestly, the way people can’t see what is staring them in the face really astounds me. Is mental illness really so normal in Malta that people don’t recognize it for what it is? For heaven’s sake, can’t people recognize the signs of mental illness and psychological disorders? Look at the way Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando are treated as individuals of normal psychology, when it is screamingly obvious (or should be) that they are not. There are in fact really strong parallels between the behaviour of all three of these individuals. It’s just that two of them had a seat in parliament and now have public positions, and one did not.]
We had reports of a man (Dutch?) who told his wife over the phone that he was going to commit suicide at L-Ahrax.
The circumstances of a judge’s death by misadventure are a matter of public interest. So are those of a bankrupt businessman.
[Daphne – The chain reaction theory does not hold, and the people who quote it are merely repeating fallacious received wisdom. If reporting suicides really did cause other suicides, we would have had no suicides for the last 30 years or so, or at least far fewer, since the voluntary agreement not to report them. But the fact is, there are probably more now than there were then.
What reporting did was give people ideas on HOW to kill themselves rather than the idea to kill themselves. They would have killed themselves anyway, but differently. The ‘copycat’ phenomenon was in the method rather than in the act itself.
I live close to a place which very many people have chosen over the years to kill themselves. For long years, it was on my daily route, and I lost count of the number of times I drove past the inevitable police hearse, ambulance, and police car pulled up at the side. In the early years I couldn’t understand why they were there, and then it clicked. The point is that nobody and nothing publicised this spot, or the fact that people jumped off it. I know only because I live close by and drove past every day and saw the results. And believe me when I say that it is far, far worse than seeing a car crash in which somebody has died. It is not so much the death as the thought of the despair which preceded it.]
Somewhere around 1980, the editors of the Maltese newspapers made an agreement between themselves not to report suicides. I recall a spate of suicide reports which seemed to have started a chain reaction. L-Orizzont’s reports were very detailed.
What we don’t get from the news we get from other people by word of mouth or nowadays through Facebook. Only last year a young boy killed himself because of cyber-bullying. The whole village where he lived knew the cause of his death, and a Facebook page was created in his memory. Shouldn’t this have been reported in the newspapers?
[Daphne – Yes. It would have drawn attention to a very serious problem, and it was definitely in the public interest to report something so grave, even if the child’s name were to be kept private. Failure to report these matters means that the public is kept in the dark as to the real social problems we are facing. It also means that minds are not concentrated on the reality of this kind of victimization.]
F*!$ing sick in the mind are the editors who either don’t report suicides that are of public interest, or who relish reporting a death of a person complete with the juicy details accompanied with pictures or filming of blood and parts of the dead body.
I watch Italian TV and suicides are reported even on Christmas Day. Would our holier than thou, Mathew Vella call the Rai News editors f*cking sick?
Isn’t this a form of censorship by people who are supposed to “say it as it is”?
When certain news are not reported on the Maltese media, people would not be able to draw their own conclusions on the news they heard or read.
“Tie me up” Labour MP Dr Anthony Zammit’s ‘hold-up’ is a case in point. The public had the right to an explanation about that and never got it.
Another case was of a man found dead of suffocation with a bag in his head. The newspapers reported it as though it was some kind of mystery. It was Daphne who pointed out that it was probably a solo sex game which went wrong.
Has any journalist worth his salt investigated the death by drowning of a man who was found with his hands bound at Marsamxett? Was it a murder or a suicide? If it was not a suicide we have good reason to be worried.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20131223/local/police-investigate-bound-corpse-found-in-marsamxett-harbour.500106#.UsZcbs3QQXw
Whichever way you look at it, had Malta Today and the Labour Party not pushed Jo Said into the public eye in the first place, the manner of his death would have been a private matter.
The fact that it is not a private matter is due to their own actions.
Now Matthew Vella must mull over that fact and face it, and think again before he does the same to another person.
Prosit Ms Caruana Galizia.
I fully agree with your argument. I admit that I never stop learning from you.
Django, I totally agree… well said!
Ms Caruana Galizia’s logic is very clear and simple and I also must admit that mainly I come to form an opinion after I read her arguments.
Same reaction here… An(other) excellent and instructive post, argued clearly and logically. Gives a good insight into how your mind ticks. Those who condemn you for ‘poisonous jealousy’ should at least try to understand your viewpoint.
[Daphne – Pointless. We’re dealing with completely different cultures here. The sort of people you describe are rooted in a primitive and long-standing culture of Mediterranean misogyny. They have hundreds of years of it bred into them. Their hatred is directly linked to the fact that I’m a woman who doesn’t conform to their standard of what a woman should be like. All their primitive hate-and-fear buttons are pushed – the very same ones which had women tortured and killed for ‘witchcraft’ as recently as 250 years ago. No difference at all – the exact same sentiments. Look at the way they speak about me: ‘that woman’, ‘this woman’, terms used for crones and witches and evil murderesses, ‘going too far’ (too far for what?), ‘must be stopped’, ‘speak to people to stop her’ & c & c. Primitive as hell. You don’t hear them speaking that way about any man, because men have a Godsent right in Mediterranean society to dominate the public sphere with their views. And they certainly wouldn’t speak about me or feel that way about me if I had been a man. Living in a Mediterranean island society is most trying for women unless they are prepared to pass themselves off as rag-dolls or whores, or are in constant ‘silly flirtatious’ mode. So much for liberal and progressive.]
I tend to agree with you that (many of) those who persecute you so vociferously don’t even read your blog because it is simply beyond them. It is not just a question of education but more importantly a mental attitude (or lack of it).
Unfortunately, this is all so evident on the comments board under the many news items of online newspapers. Prejudice and lack of clear thinking is so rampant it is small wonder we got the government we have (with all the faux pas we’ve witnessed these past 9 months).
Many people prefer to ‘compartmentalize’ their life and life in general (e.g. private-public issues) leading to a contradictory statements and conclusions.
Finally, many thanks for your selfless and thankless efforts in the service of unearthing the (real) news behind the news.
You have a point there. I am a man and all I can say to that is Aye, aye.
Indirectly, you have also answered the other objection that among your detractors are a number of your own sex.
I don’t think the hatred is misogynist, except perhaps to a small degree. Most of it is just hatred because you disagree with things and you have a point of view, but that point of view is not tied to tribal politics.
I’m a man, but I’ve experienced some of the same hatred, except in my case they found it very easy to shut me up by shutting me out.
In Malta, you’re expected to go through life pressing the Like button. You know, as in Xarabank. The only points of view that are allowed are those defined by the Great Schism of PN and MLP. Anything else, and you’re l-istramb negattiv. I mean how many original thinkers has Malta produced, ever? It’s smile, smile, grovel, ingratiate, praise, smile and applaud.
I don’t know if it’s Mediterranean mercantilism or colonial self-preservation or good old Catholic love, but it’s certainly not Western. Hellenic dialectic might as well be Klingon as far as Malta is concerned.
[Daphne – Not really, H. P. All you have to do is consider how very different events would have been had Franco Debono and Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando been women. They would have been classified as hysterical, menopausal or premenstrual crazy witches and nobody would have taken a blind bit of notice. However, because they are men, even though they really do have psychological problems, one of them is a drunk and both of them speak in a neurotic repetitive way that is a dead-cert indicator of never-mind-what, they were taken literally and seriously and given credibility. I live with this kind of thing every day, you know. The people who want to stop me never ring me or even try to speak to me. Instead they ring every man in my life or who they think is in my life to exert his authority over me. If it were not so sad it would be risible.]
I still think a man who shared your views, your style of thinking and your quick intelligence would be hated in very much the same way. Minus the phoning other men, but the reaction would be the same.
Tragic, but what is more so is that the people don’t realise who is in the wrong here.
Your article was newsworthy and yes, I remember Jo Said. How he was used when he was alive and how he was discarded after he expired politically. It’s very sad.
On another note: Maltatoday really scraped the bottom with someone like him. What kind of editor publishes that on a serious newspaper.
Could you imagine the same on any other? It’s like this country can’t tell the difference between what is trash and what isn’t.
Wot d hack peepol.
Matthew Vella is a puppet used by other puppets to make one whole farce.
Re Judge Pace. “The reality is they would actually have done right by him in reporting the truth, for what people felt was overwhelming compassion for his remorse and what it drove him to.” How very true. My respect for the judge goes way above that I have for some of his contemporaries, both active and retired.
Mr. Vella finds it hard to accept that what is actually “f*cking sick” is his newspaper’s going to bed with the Labour Party and with J Dalli BA.
It has been in bed with the latter ever since he lost the PN leadership election.
Perhaps one day he’ll take Mr Vella on a flying visit to the Bahamas and it will all have been worth while.
Does your anger perhaps stem from a guilty conscience, dear Mr. Vella?
The possibility that some people might have hastened Jo Said’s death for political gain – now that’s f**king sick.
http://www.samaritans.org/media-centre/media-guidelines-reporting-suicide
Matthew Vella was a prat at school and it looks like he has not changed much in grown-up life.
Vella’s expletives also denote a possessive attitude: Jo Said was one of their exclusive stories.
There’s Dalli, the hunting referendum and Astrid Vella on a consistent basis, whilst JPO, Franco and Mugliett seem to be some on and off feature, depending on circumstance.
Fact is, Malta Today readers can be identified half a minute into a conversation. I call them the Muddy Waters nostalgics.
They are malleable, have easily dented egos and are friable. Why, they’ve even taken it on themselves to referee bipolar politics, and when they try, give me a Labour MP any day.
At least I know where I stand with those.
Matthew Vella has a chip on his shoulder in the same way his big boss has with the world. Since when did Mr Vella’s cold heart become so warm?
No doubt this is a ‘bad conscience’ reaction by Mr Vella and his entourage who are as guilty as sin for placing Mr Said in the limelight in the first place.
May the soul of the deceased rest in peace and may the people who used him shamelessly to pursue their own political ends spend several sleepless nights due to a heavy conscience.
So he won’t be a bystander on abusive blogging now.
Explain abusive blogging, Matthew.
“Explain abusive blogging, Matthew.”
Anything he doesn’t like or agree with.
And anything that Saviour and Roger don’t like or agree with.
Anything that doesn’t come out of a toaster.
Ooh.. Just wait for it. Now you’re going to get into trouble for suggesting that the prime minister or the leader of the opposition commit suicide.
Dear me, this is such a literal country.
That’s easy for Muscat, closing the buttons on his jacket.
God save us all from such a day…
As if Matthew Vella would miss an opportunity to continue putting Daphne Caruana Galizia in a bad light, knowing full well that the majority of those he intends to target can’t even read what Daphne writes, let alone understand it.
Hallina, Sur Vella.
POSTED BENEATH VELLA’S OPINION PIECE ON MALTA TODAY:
BY: harmonyplus — 03/01/2014 15:31:15 Suicides are always unfortunate but I cannot understand why Jo Said’s death should not be reported. He was not a private citizen as Mr Vella seems to imply even though Mr Said did not occupy a public post. It would have been more appropriate for Malta Today to report the news itself in the right manner without hiding the fact that Mr Said took his own life. International news agencies report suicides regularly without having to censor their journalists as happens in Malta. And that is because they have a duty to their readers to provide them with news, however sad that might be. Mr Vella’s foul language in this article is unacceptable and in any other newsroom he would have been reprimanded, if not sacked. Much as I enjoy reading his contributions, today I was disappointed. I would like to offer my condolences to Mr Said’s family. They are not in any way responsible for what has happened.
[Daphne – Perfectly put, whoever wrote that.]
Daphne, I am with you in this all the way.
One of my tasks as Duty Officer at Police Headquarters was to release a press statement informing the media of the goings-on of the day.
I did also have the experience of having to deal with suicide cases varying from death by hanging to overdose to inhaling of the entire contents of a 10kg gas cylinder.
I shared with the families of these people the grief, the pain, even the stigma that at times haunted them from society. Writing of things that serve no purpose other than have people satisfy their roaming curiosity makes me sad and brings to mind certain scenes, feelings, emotions, tears, pain that cannot be wiped from memory.
In my tour of duty I never released such news. In fact, a feather in the cap of the Police Corps, we were among the first to advocate and practice that such news should not go public.
We were in unison that consideration for the families and friends of the deceased by far outweighed any other consideration coming from whichever quarter it could come from. Some journalists objected strongly.
This is also to show how certain journalists could be immature, irresponsible and I dare say, heartless.
[Daphne – Union Press was always the greatest culprit, publishing pictures of car crash victims in close-up even when they were entirely private persons, but all the newspapers seemed to find it necessary to describe deaths by overdose in great detail, as though it was a murder scene rather than a personal tragedy. It is not, however, consideration for the families involved that is paramount here (everyone has a family whatever the reason they are in the news) but straightforward privacy rules: if you are a private person, then the manner of your death is nobody else’s business, unless you are murdered.]
Vulgarity is no substitute for arguments.
The need to be vulgar, to repeat being so, and to do so in the glare of self-sought publicity, does no credit to the perpetrator.
Or, indeed, to the persons who permit him to be so offensive.