Some things are not our business, and this is one of them. Newspapers would do well to remember that.
I cannot bear the insensitivity with which some people comment beneath stories about the death of private individuals, for all the world as though nobody struck down by grief might be reading them.
It’s bad enough that the news media insist on the belief that unusual death turns a private person into a public figure (it most certainly does not) and so splash photographs and personal details all over the place.
Then they go beyond that and don’t disable the comments function for those particular stories.
A 31-year-old lawyer was found dead in her car on the Bahar ic-Caghaq coast road. That’s all they needed to say. They shouldn’t have included her name and they certainly should not have used her photograph.
Those who are private citizens in life remain so in death, unless the death is a murder of significant public relevance, as distinct from prurient interest.
timesofmalta.com is keeping us updated with blow-by-blow details of this poor woman’s autopsy and so on, as though it’s anybody’s business at all apart from her family’s.
That we are a nation of seksikin goes without saying, but this is the limit. They are treating the death of this PRIVATE PERSON no differently to Whitney Houston’s.
And beneath the stories, all manner of jerks and idiotic people are busy arguing about caps lock, punctuation marks and the shortcomings of gOnzIpn because Malta can’t carry out its own toxicology tests – because, you know, we have so many murders every week that it’s important to keep a full-blown toxicology service going.
Then they’ll be able to complain about how gOnzIpN wastes money.
As for the speculation about the circumstances of her death, I think we have to simply assume that women do not ordinarily drive to that part of Bahar ic-Caghaq alone at night, park and then die of natural causes. Once we have assumed that, we should draw a discreet veil over the whole thing and leave the police and the family to it.
IT’S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS. Wanting to know because we’re a bunch of seksikin does not translate automatically into the right to know, and newspapers are wrong to pander to this offensive prurience.
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In January, the situation had become ridiculous with Maltatoday reporting comments on other newspapers as facts.
I don’t think anyone wants a repeat of those weeks.
Erm, but that was a double murder… Society and the media cannot and shouldn’t close an eye in those situations. Justice must be served and the public must know that it was served. (I wouldn’t want to live next to a murder on the loose.) The fact that that particular tragedy happened to an affluent family was just an unfortunate coincidence.
[Daphne – WRONG. The only justification for shoving that story into the news was that one of the people involved – Mrs Zammit – was a very public figure with a consistent presence in the media. Had there been no public person involved, there would have been absolutely no way the newspapers could justifiably defend their decision to report the details and dissect them. What you had there was not a murder but a salacious ‘scandal’. It was obvious at the outset that that the story did not go beyond the three people involved, and that there was no ‘murderer on the loose’ and could never have been. The reporting was disgusting enough as it was. People were not concerned because they thought there might be a murderer on the loose. They just wanted to know personal details which were and still are none of their business.]
This, on the other hand, seems to be a very personal matter in that no third parties were involved. After foul play was ruled out, the media has no duty to investigate further because society has nothing to gain from it. Only in that case does continued media attention amount to wrongful prying into a private life.
You just cannot compare the two incidents.
[Daphne – The media has no right or duty to investigate murders. You have your powers confused. That’s the right and duty of the police. In fact, the duty of the media is not to hinder police work, and to cooperate with the police when it has information on crimes. The media cannot prosecute; they can only report. The media has the right and duty to investigate the police.]
I’m not comparing the incidents.
Why should a newspaper offer a comments facility below the story of a murder?
The newspapers were in a frenzy, updating every hour and cross-referencing each other until at one point, Malta Today quoted snide comments as factual hypotheses being followed by investigators.
The story was literally creating itself to accelerate the rate of hits.
Everyone seemed intent on getting it out of their system by talking about it, but the way online editions lapped it up was absolutely sickening.
My sentiments entirely. It’s often quite embarrassing to read and to a point a little disturbing. It’s as if the person was well-known or in the public eye, but somehow some of us are not aware of it.
The Times of Malta does seem to inhabit a strange world, oddly disconnected from the modern media industry.
As for those ‘comments’, timesofmalta.com insists on publishing – for years now some of us in the real world have been moaning about this newspaper publishing homophobic, biased, racist, factually dangerous and libellous ‘Comments’ on its website.
Sometimes, deliberately refusing to publish objective and well researched ‘Comments’ in favour of those from the nutters end of the social spectrum.
Some of these strange remarks falsely depicting Malta to a worldwide audience as a place that’s – well, not quite on the planet as we know it.
Now that the ‘News of the World’ is defunct, ‘The Times of Malta’ is perfectly free to utilize the title, since our latter day ‘tabloid’ is plumbing the same depths. Sick and shameful.
Well said.
I agree. May she rest in peace and may God help her family during this difficult time.
Prosit, Daphne. My thoughts exactly. It was bad enough for people who knew this young lady (myself included) to find out through the website. I’m still under shock. I’m hoping that we won’t be regaled with all the sordid details which accompanied the unfolding of the double-murder story of New Year’s Day.
Indeed, it’s none of our business and the papers should see to it that it remains that way.
“As for the speculation about the circumstances of her death, I think we have to simply assume that women do not ordinarily drive to that part of Bahar ic-Caghaq alone at night, park and then die of natural causes. Once we have assumed that, we should draw a discreet veil over the whole thing and leave the police and the family to it.”
I was wondering how long it was going to take those idiots to work out the above for themselves. Once foul play is ruled out, it’s always a ‘natural cause’, whether that happens entirely out of the blue or not. And the newspapers cannot tell you if this is the case.
Very true, Daphne. Not only does gossip have no place in stories which concern only the individuals involved, political banter makes it all worse.
Of course, we all know that comments are allowed on those stories for a reason; they keep people coming back in outrage, raising their page views, so they can charge more and more for Gift of Life to advertise there.
I agree. This story has shown 80% of The Times’ regular commenters for what they really are – absolute and utter jerks with the IQ of a rotten cabbage.
I was going to comment about this on one of your other posts, because I really could not stand it any more.
I happened to know the deceased through work and she always came across as a very nice person indeed. She does not deserve this crap.
Not “seksikin” but “seksieka”.
[Daphne – It’s ‘seksikin’ where I grew up. ‘Seksika’ would be the woman, and ‘seksik’ would be the man, though I suppose there’s an ‘e’ after the ‘i’.]
“Zekzieka” is like “lablaba” : it could be a plural and it could be female.
As you may notice it’s with the “z” not with the “s”.
We say Zekzik not Seksik.
[Daphne – And we pronounce it with an ‘s’. There you go.]
I invite you to make a Google search of both words and you will find out who’s right.
We also pronounce “ Ħobs” with an ’s’ but we should write “Ħobż” ; same applies to zekzik.
Most probably it’s your Sliema soft accent.
[Daphne – Not really. Hobz is a final ‘z’. It’s different.]
Well said, Daphne…prosit.
You and your double standards! “I cannot bear the insensitivity with which some people comment beneath stories about the death of private individuals, for all the world as though nobody struck down by grief might be reading them.” .. You have got to be kidding us with this. You do the same with your beloved Mintoff and he’s still alive.
[Daphne – Exactly how is Mintoff a private citizen? He is the most public of Maltese public figures, John.]
I know, you’re going to say that “this lawyer was a private individual whereas Mintoff was a prime minister” but shouldn’t we all respect the dignity of people, whether they are in the public limelight or not?
[Daphne – Definitely not. The law itself makes the distinction, precisely because of that. Also, Mintoff was a particularly cruel, vile and obnoxious prime minister. We are more than entitled to deride him. He should think himself lucky we are unable (or unwilling) to steal his property, ransack his home or set fire to it while roughing him up in some dark cell. What next – respect for Kim Il Sung?]
As much as you hate Mintoff, don’t you realize that there might be other people “struck down by grief” reading your comments?
[Daphne – John, I have about as much sympathy for them as they would have had for me. Had they stuck around in Malta trying to stop their father from behaving like a communist dictator, then I might have felt differently. But I don’t. And that is quite apart from the fact that they are quite patently not ‘struck down by grief’ at all, but knocking on doors for votes.]
I’m not going to get into the pro or against Mintoff discussion cause I don’t really care quite frankly. Half of the population loves him and half of the population hates him. Let’s leave it at that.
[Daphne – Work out which side the brains and education are on, John, and then you might also be able to see that the two views are not equal.]
Dear Daphne,I think you really blew your top today.
You should try to forget and forgive, even though it might be difficult.
[Daphne – I did not blow my top, Silvio. I wrote that in between making a cup of tea and watering my herbs. It is precisely because I care so little that I can say what I do about Mintoff and those who surround him.]
Silvio, you are so far out of your depth on this blog. But don’t give up. We all need comic relief.
Don’t mix your herbs and your tea. Or you might start posting silly comments on Facebook.
Prosit. Cannot imagine this happening if the person was closely related to the editor or to one of the newspaper’s staff. timesofmalta.com has become the pits.
Well said. Times of Malta is competing to become the trash can of Maltese newspapers. Maybe Joseph Muscat has managed to plant his weeds there after all.
Yesterday they wasted a good quarter of a page to tell us that Austin Gatt and Paul Gonzi are working on the PN campaign. Where is the news in that? Isn’t it natural?
It would have been news had they been working on the PL campaign instead.
What could be the reasons behind The Times’ recent change of direction:
1. hiring of a superannuated “expert” surplus to a London tabloid;
2. recruitment of B.Comms. still wet behind the ears who think that Winston Churchill was President of US of A;
3. axes to grind, like all guns blazing at Arriva from Day One after awarding of contract and before operations had even started in July last year;
4. too many whackos squeezing out the normal people on the comments board, with partiality to PL fellow travellors and assorted weirdos; sane comments get the chop pronto.
After decades of buying the “hard copy” each and every morning, I am seriously thinking of giving it up now that even the obits are available on line. Given the “jew b’xejn jew xejn” mentality, I think the powers-that-be will have second thoughts on charging for on-line access.
Silvio Parnis on MaltaToday
“If Labour is in power after the next general election, it will treat all citizens of Malta and Gozo with respect, regardless of which area they come from. The Labour Party insists that the time for politics of arrogance and division is over and nobody should be treated as a second-class citizen,”
Parnis said the government’s attitude is accentuating the divide between the north and the south of the island.
Isn’t he the same to announce that he will be appointed Minister tas-Sawt
This is the new Italian culture whenever a murder occurs. Rather than having people helping out the police, they do their best to obstruct the law and make things almost impossible to the detriment of justice.
We have bcome insensitive to the victims and have found joy in the thrill of the unveiling events.
“And that is quite apart from the fact that they are quite patently not ‘struck down by grief’ at all, but knocking on doors for votes.”
They will probably be struck down by grief when he does finally leave this vale of tears for a place somewhat worse but that grief will have nothing to do with him leaving but rather with what they find out he has not left them.
Today’s move by the opposition is based on a Wikileak report that they probably haven’t even bothered to read at all, and The Times gives it prominance without even checking the original document or quoting it.
This shows how this newspaper is becoming a rag. Had The Times checked they wouldn’t have even bothered carrying George Vella’s hallucinations.
Margaret was a pleasant colleague. She was so nice and shy at the same time. She would have been horrified to wake up and find her name plastered all over the front pages.
There’s not much we can do about the comments. They are what they are, written by people who don’t give a damn about Margaret’s feelings.
What about the website’s ‘moderatoration’ policy?
In my opinion there is a limit to people’s right to know; but society cannot just accept a mysterious death and stop there. Police investigate to find a motive and a murderer if there is one.
We cannot accept that a crime was committed and a murderer/criminal is on the loose.
Normal people have a right to privacy, but politicians and so called VIPs lose their privacy as soon as they enter the public scene.
[Daphne – Not really, no. Not at all. That certain people ‘lose the right to privacy’ is a totalitarian, Soviet concept. The right to privacy is a fundamental human right, and nobody loses it. It is only where the ‘private life’ of the public individual moves into the public domain or has relevance to the public that it is legitimately reportable. There are landmark judgements in this regard.]
As far as I know, I can’t just ask the pathologist to tell me the cause of death of Tom, Dick or Harry. So what makes it legal if a newspaper serves as an intermediary between the pathologist and the public?
How can the soul of that poor woman rest in peace with all her private details splashed all over the comments boards of the two main contenders for gutter -press-of-the-year award.? My heart goes out for the poor little mites she left behind and her other loved ones.
Shame on you Times and Maltatoday!
I tend to agree with you but let’s put things straight… just like we don’t need a full time toxicology lab running, we don’t need to spend so many millions on a building that will be used part time anyway. (Not to mention 1 full month Easter Holidays).
Only in Malta!
[Daphne – I take it you are referring to parliament house. My dear, that’s not an office. That’s the symbol of democracy. You might as well say that you shouldn’t spend money on a church used only on Sunday mornings. And what about a theatre that’s used six times a year?]
Of course it’s the symbol of democracy… reminds me of the Casa Poporului!
It is in the public interest to know about crimes. Therefore the press should report and investigate on a suspicious death. If this was just a private matter the police would not or should not investgate.
Even accidents as serious traffic accidents are often reported in the press. In these cases the distinction between private and public becomes blurred as is happening in the Nicholas Azzopardi case.
[Daphne – Serious traffic accidents are reported only because we live in a small town masquerading as a country, David. Serious traffic accidents are not reported in national newspapers on on national television anywhere else. Malta’s national newspapers are actually local newspapers, so the news inevitably shrinks down to ‘local’. Who in Manchester would give a damn if The Daily Telegraph were to report a car crash in Sussex? Or perhaps they could have a car crash supplement every day? For that matter, nobody gives a damn about traffic accidents in Malta either, except for those who know the victim. We’re just stuck in this ridiculous rut, dating to the years when cars were rare in Malta and so car accidents were news topics.]