Kevin, Jason and Mark – a cautionary tale of how the electronic media can be used to slander people
Few people know that if you circulate slanderous or libellous emails about others you expose yourself to investigation by the police and to possible prosecution. I’m not saying this to put the fear of God (or the police) into you. I’m saying it to point out that what you might think is a bit of harmless fun or gossip is actually a criminal act.
Yes, spreading harmful lies about people by email is a criminal act. And so it should be. It is not freedom of expression but an act of moral violence perpetrated on a person who is left without the proper means to fight back and undo the damage. Some lies are harmless, yes. Others are clearly a joke and should be laughed off unless you are totally devoid of a sense of humour. But other lies are very, very damaging indeed, especially when they are given the ring of truth so that others may believe them.
As the victim of precisely this kind of lying slander during the election campaign, I have particularly strong feelings about it. I have been written about, criticised, carped at and laughed at for nigh on 20 years, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. But I draw the line at malicious lies, about me or anybody else. And that’s why I never circulate slanderous emails. I don’t think it’s a bit of a laugh. I think it’s horrible.
There are a couple of PDF documents doing the rounds right now that purport to be exchanges of emails between Kevin Decesare and Jason Micallef, and between Kevin Decesare and Mark Micallef, a journalist with The Times. They are an attempt at shifting the blame for the leaking of the Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando story to the Labour Party onto Kevin Decesare, who has denied this from day one. He is now thinking of going to the police as the emails continue to do their rounds.
In one set of emails, Kevin gives Jason the story and Jason promises him a permit in return. This is slanderous to both of them, and my sheer dislike of Jason doesn’t stop me seeing that and won’t stop me saying it. In the other set of emails, Kevin promises Mark Micallef a bribe for running a story, and Mark Micallef replies ‘Call me’. Mark is horrified and is at a loss how to clear his name. What does he do? Put out a press release saying that he does not take bribes? The situation is appalling.
Read the pdfs here: fredu.pdf and kevin.pdf.
The emails are fake – not just fake, but clearly, obviously fake. As soon as I read them, I knew that there was no way on earth that Kevin Decesare, who comes from exactly the same linguistic group that I do – for want of a better description – could have written them. The linguistic clues that the emails were faked by somebody who is not a tal-pepe Sliema boy in his mid-40s who went to St Edward’s (sorry, Kevin) and who speaks exactly as I do leapt right off the screen and into my face. Others, who may not come from the same linguistic group – or who do, but who are unaware that Kevin Decesare does, too – will believe this slander. And that’s why it’s dangerous and criminal.
Based purely on linguistic usage, I would hazard a (pretty accurate, I think) guess that the person who faked these emails is a man aged between the mid-20s and early 30s, from a lower middle-class or aspirational working-class background, who is unfamiliar with the linguistic usage of people like Kevin and so is unable to mimic it accurately enough that people like me, who come from the same linguistic group, do not pick up the clues. The profile of the person who faked these emails is exactly the same, I would say, as that of the people who write for and produce the Labour Party’s website www.maltastar.com. The linguistic usage is identical. I am not saying it is them. I repeat that I am not saying it is them. They would have no interest in slandering Jason Micallef. I am saying that the linguistic usage is identical and that the profile of the person is likely to be identical too – the same profile I described above.
I think that what we are looking at here is a situation in which the person who really was responsible for Alfred Sant getting hold of that contract – through his carelessness with copies, I would say, rather than through deliberate sabotage – is trying to shift the blame and exculpate himself by landing somebody else in the s**t. There were only two copies of that contract besides the one safely locked under great security in the notary’s office, and one of them was in Pullicino Orlando’s hands. But that’s beside the point. The point is that somebody has faked emails that slander a prominent person with a reputation to protect, the secretary-general of a political party, and a respected journalist with an important newspaper. The emails are being mass-mailed around Malta. My son received one today, through the Amazonia e-mailing list, on which there are hundreds, if not thousands, of people his age, many of whom will not know Kevin Decesare or Mark Micallef from a tomato, and who will be predisposed to believe that the exchange of emails is real.
Here are some excerpts from ‘Kevin’s’ emails that he would never have written, no more than I would have.
1. “I have a scoop that with it the PN will surly lose the 8th March general election. As I told the leader before today here are some of the facts.”
‘I have a scoop that with it’ – this is the syntax used by people who speak English as a poorly-learned second language. This person doesn’t know the difference in meaning between ‘surly’ and ‘surely’, and because his spell-check wouldn’t have picked it up, he didn’t either. Also, Kevin would have said ‘the election’ (as I do) and not ‘the 8th March general election’, and he would never have said ‘as I told the leader’, but ‘as I told Alfred Sant’, because he knows him on a personal basis, as does Jason. They are discussing somebody they both know personally. Even if he didn’t know Sant personally, the very thought of Kevin Decesare talking about ‘the leader’ makes me double up.
2. “A permit was issued to built a disco”
I think Kevin knows the difference between built and build.
3. “the architect of this project is nobody but ‘Paul Camilleri’ Lawrence Gonzi Prime cousin”
This is a dead give-away that the writer is somebody who is thinking in Maltese (Kevin thinks in English), and who is so unfamiliar with English that he has translated ‘prim kugin’ as ‘prime cousin’ rather than as first cousin, like those people who use ‘niece’ and ‘nephew’ when they mean ‘grandson’ and ‘grand-daughter’ because the word in Maltese is the same for both kinds of relationship – ‘neputi’ and ‘neputija.
The writer is also the sort of person who puts names in inverted commas for suggestive emphasis, but if I tell you what sort of people I think do this, you’ll rush up at me with accusations of snobbery, so I won’t.
4. “he can fit about 4000 persons for sure”
That ‘for sure’ is a give-away with bells on. It’s used by wannabes trying to mimic tal-pepe people and getting it wrong. A tal-pepe person would split the infinitive and say “he can definitely fit about 4000 people (not persons) there”
5. “These are the points I managed to get for now. My architect is working on it to have more detailed information and I will be forward everything to you to give to our leader. Besides my notary is checking for us to whom the land belong to.”
Aaaarrrrgghhhh! Hopeless – I don’t even need to explain this one to you. But in case the faker is reading this, I’ll explain what Kevin would have written, because it’s no different to what I’d have written myself: “This is all I’ve got for now. My architect is trying to get hold of more information. I’ll send it to you when I’ve got it, and you can pass it on to Dr Sant. Meanwhile, my notary is trying to find out who owns the land.” Spot the difference.
6. “our deals will no longer be secured”
This has been written by somebody who has no idea that ‘deals’ are not ‘secured’ on the basis of the presence or absence of competition. He probably doesn’t even know that it is loans, not deals, that are secured, or what security means in these terms as opposed to ‘feeling secure’.
7. “Land in question belong to a PN MP”
Oh for heaven’s sake, I don’t have to explain to you what’s wrong with this one. All I know is that Kevin Decesare is going to be teased for months by people walking up to him and speaking in semi-pidgin about Our Leader.
8. “I believe that thousands of money were surly paid”
There’s that ‘surly’ again. Where I come from, we say ‘he must have paid thousands’. Thousands of money? As opposed to what – thousands of potatoes?
9. “Make sure my name is not mentioned nowhere”
Oh dear, a double negative that’s a clue with flashing lights on it. The Vickie Pollards of Malta strike again. Anywhere, you dunce! Anywhere! This would have been written by the kind of person who says ‘I didn’t go nowhere’, because the Maltese equivalent is ‘ma mort mkien’ (I didn’t go nowhere). Again, the person is thinking in Maltese and translating into English – don’t mention me mkien (nowhere).
10. “Make high effort as I cannot compete with this design”
Make high effort? I have to make a high effort to keep a straight face.
11. “At least I gain time”
I wish you could see my face right now. This was written by the same kind of person who says ‘don’t mention me nowhere’, and who can’t distinguish between the present tense and the future in English because Maltese, in the translation of that sentence, uses exactly the same verb for the present and the future.
12.”Stopping this project will surely (spelt right for the first time) mean that our co-operations (plural) will get closer and our arrangements will increase for sure”
Yes, definitely the profile of the kind of person I described somewhere up above. I’m not saying it to disparage that kind of person. I’m just pointing out that it can’t possibly be Kevin Decesare, no more than it could be me writing that.
So please, if you’re one of those people circulating these emails because you think they’re real, or because you think it’s just a bit of fun, don’t. Stop it. What you are doing is wrong and dangerous.
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Please STOP these emails. With all sorts of examinations round the corner our poor students will certainly perform miserably in their English Language tests if you do not shut up at once !!!
I dont know what the perpetrators of these fake e-mails are trying to achieve. They are certainly slandering K J & M but they provide no defense whatsoever to JPO. If they are trying to esculpate JPO they have to do better.
@P Portelli – they are not trying to excuse Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando. They are trying to shift the blame for the contract ending up in the Labour Party’s hands. The person who was responsible for being careless with the contract doesn’t want to be pinpointed, and is trying to blame somebody else.
Any suggestions who the traitor might be?
Contents apart, I agree that this pidgin English – almost literally translated from Maltese – is definitely not Kevin Decesare’s work!
First of all, thanks for this Daphne, it gives me an informal platform from which to defend myself. I’m still toying with the idea of sending a chain e-mail, making a categorical denial, but I just don’t want to legitimise this sort of thing through a (semi)official reply.
The e-mail which concerns me is a complete fabrication. I cannot vouch for the other e-mail exchange but it looks like it’s fake too for a number of reasons.
What I can say for certain, however, is that I never communicated with Kevin Decesare in any way about the Mistra story. As it happens, I have absolutely no relationship with Mr Decesare, professional or otherwise.
Most of all, I deny flatly the insinuation that I have ever accepted or planned to accept any reward (other than my wage obviously) for covering this or any other story. In fact, I’ve filed a police report on Friday, shortly after I found out about this e-mail, precisely because I find this sort of slander very serious.
Lastly, there are a few simple facts which further prove how baseless the whole idea really is. In the attached correspondence, Mr Decesare is supposedly letting me in on Labour’s plan to drop its much rumoured pre-electoral ‘bombshell’. Leaving the remuneration bit aside for a minute, any independent journalist in his right mind would pounce on that sort of information. The fact is, however, that I was not the one to cover Labour’s Mistra press conference precisely because I wasn’t let in on the MLP’s plans by Mr Decesare or anyone else.
I was assigned to Labour’s only officially scheduled activity in Gozo on the day because our newsroom was tipped off, as was Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando and most journalists, that Alfred Sant would drop the story there. It didn’t happen as we now know. After the rally, the Labour entourage rushed off to catch the first ferry back to Malta so Alfred Sant could address the surprise, onsite press conference, of which the media was only officially informed some 20 minutes in advance. I got a call from the office informing me that Labour had just sent an e-mail announcing the Mistra press conference but it was too late for me to catch the ferry since I was already in Victoria having lunch. Rozanne Zammit ended up covering the press conference and I don’t regret it – the ravioli were excellent.
What’s more, before the election, I only wrote two stories about the matter. One of them was concerning Alfred Sant’s press conference outside the police headquarters (to which I was assigned) and the other was Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s reply to it the following day. I only really pursued the story and uncovered some facts exclusively after the election.
I have my suspicions regarding the source of this e-mail and they run along the lines of Daphne’s thinking, primarily because all the people implicated in this thing (myself included) appear to be accessories rather than targets. The insinuations of bribery seem to be there simply to make the exchange sexier.
I was not aware of these e-mails. It could very well be some one from the P.N. clan that reads Daphne.
for goodness dake, get the police involved pronto, and put these people away.
If emails like these were not so dangerous, they would be laughable.
They are pathetic anyway.
And Kevin, all dat floos I spent on your edoocation man,
how could you ??:)
The sad thing is that some idiots might fall for this one.
BUT…Kevin’s friends, acquaintances, as well as his business rivals(who are of his academic level and background) will not.
Michael Debono – “some one from the P.N. clan that reads Daphne” (sic)?
Have you been reading Joseph lately? Or Toni? Or … better not go on!
Actually, the language and terminology you use make it sound like you come from the same “clan” that wrote the emails!
Amanda sounds like “amande” ” lews mor” I don’t know in which language.
Who is Joseph? Who is Tony? I know several Joseph (no plural) and a lot of Tony (again no plural). Those I know very well are/were my late brothers. Please leave them in peace or they will haunt you. Beware!
What’s wrong with my King’s English? Please give me a lesson for free. I will be grateful.
When I use tools to correct my writings I get well over 80 yours got only 72! Shame!
What clan? I might sue you for libel!
Don’t panic. I will not.
Just guess this charade and be happy.
Had not a French bare headed ass not interfered I would be a doctor of philosophy. At the same time I am decorated with an inverted George Cross.
I am notorious.
Who am I?
No prize if you guess.
I would like to inform the author of these ridiculous emails that I have informed my lawyer to inform the police for them to take the appropriate action. I am sure that they will discover that he is a Pulitzer prize winner.
Absolutely hilarious. I was actually in fits while reading it (very rare).
As an Old Edwardian, i can safely say that at St. Edward’s you wouldnt get past Prep 2 (Junior 2?) with that kind of English.
What a laugh!
Paul, I think prep 1 would be more realistic
Michael Debono – Joseph Muscat, Toni Abela – As if you didn’t know! Why should I know your brothers if I don’t even know – and couldn’t be bothered with knowing – you?
Incidentally, in English (as opposed to Maltese), one should say “Josephs” when referring to more than one “Joseph” – As in the “Josephs of this world …”.
As for your riddle … Well, I couldn’t give a toss!
Yours truly
Amanda (Which means “lovable”, “worthy of love” – and certainly not “lewz morr” :) )
i Cant understand why you appoligised for calling Kevin a Sliema Tal Peppe man. I am one too,what’s the problem?
Those of us who know Kevin very well would also know that Kevin is a highly educated person. There are two ways of speaking and writing English, in Malta that is. 1. Most of the people living or raised in our patch would think in English both when writing it or speaking it. Fortunately or unfortunately most of us attended Church Schools for our primary education and it was against school policy to speak or even think in Maltese then. 2. Then there are those who find it difficult to think in English therefore they choose the easy way out by translating from Maltes to English before putting pen to paper or opening their mouth.
If that is not enough Kevin’s moved on to St. Edwards for his secondary education, if ever there was an English school in Malta St. Edwards is it. Today is the first time I heard about this story and only know what i’ve read in Daphne’s notebook but as one of Kevin’s good friends I can assure you that a) Kevin’s English is perfect and b) he is a very intellegent person and astute businessman who would never, ever, do anything so stupid via email or other for that matter but email for crying out loud even my 12 year old son knows better then that.
Dear Kev,
I’m an Old Edwardian myself. If you’re suddenly parading yourself as our representative when it comes to the use of the English language may I humbly make the following suggestions? Don’t use the same word in one sentence in a two sentence posting, for God’s sake. Surely your vocabulary is a bit more extensive than that. You use the word ‘inform’ three times in your first sentence. You are aware, or perhaps you were a bit too emotional to think straight when you were writing the post, that ‘inform the police for them to take the appropriate action” is a literal translation of ‘jinforma l-pulizija biex jiehdu azzjoni…’ and sounds funny in English. And it doesn’t make sense. You don’t ‘inform the police for them to take action’. You inform them and then, perhaps, go on to ask them if they feel that anything can be done on their part. Perhaps you could replace that post with the following : “ I would like to inform the author of these ridiculous e-mails that I have instructed my lawyer to bring them to the attention of the police so that they may take any actions that they deem to be appropriate. “
Couldn’t resist this fascinating exercise in linguistics, sorry.
Regards.
Tony Borg
Dear Tony
I have just read your posting, you’re right. I was in a super agitated state at the time I responded. Feeling much better now,thanks for your contribution
@Amanda Mallia
You have not guessed. It is so easy
D.Ph + ane + CG = Daphne C.G.
D.Ph + âne(French for ass, interfering without the hat/\ =ane). GC inverted =CG
Final result: Daphne C.G.
amande = lews mor in French.
An interesting observation, which I cannot but make, is that despite Daphne’s gallant defence of Kevin DeCesare’s linguistic talents in her article, his display in the ensuing opinion fair leaves much to be desired. I have no intent of meaning that in any offensive way Mr. DeCesare, but people will now expect of you the immense linguistic expertise that Daphne has bestowed upon you.
On a different note, for better or for worse, I wish to congratulate Daphne on another positive contribution to the barren land which we call “Maltese Media”.
Well worth reading. Honestly.
I have no doubt about the integrity of the people targeted by these emails and I am sure that events will bear them out. However, isn’t the general line of reasoning, based on linguistic clues, uncharacteristically naïve? If I were able to write perfect English and I wanted to send out a malicious fake document, the last thing I would do is write it in perfect English.
On a lighter note, if this is really the author’s best attempt at writing the language, he or she must sound like a right old moose when speaking it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xX85Y5Zb7sw
While commending Mrs. Caruana Galizia’s initiative I cannot but comment on the path this discussion seems to be taking.
The very idea that we are still resorting to the ‘tal-pepe’ versus ‘hamalli’ rhetoric makes me cringe. Why can’t we, as Maltese, appreciate the linguistic and cultural diversity of our nation without resorting to the ever-so-ancient post-colonialist class divide? What started out as a harmless linguistic analysis turned into a value-loaded discourse, articulating the ‘differences’ between English and Maltese speakers, rather than focusing simply on the individual perpetrator.
Ultimately it is my contention that the majority of the population lies somewhere in between. Although most choose to label themselves as English or Maltese speakers the distinction is superficial. I don’t have to remind you that language is a social construction. So whether we choose to speak in English or Maltese the outcome is dinstinctly Maltese (and not in the linguistic sense).
[Moderator – That last sentence is a pointed observation.]
I had heard about this e-mail going round and lo and behold I received my own copy today…
Besides the fact that such an exchange would have never been done by e-mail, another obvious giveaway that this is a fake is the subject line. Would any self-respecting businessman use “Biggest MEPA Scandal” as a subject?
Also, most users never bother changing the subject line when having a conversation via e-mail. In the supposed exchange between JM and KD, the subject went from “Biggest MEPA Scandal”, to “Mistra Update”, to “Grazzi”, to “3D Impression”, to “Grazzi” again…
And one more thing, did anyone notice that Jason Micallef’s computer believes it was a Thursday on Feb 19th? Kevin’s grammar might have gone astray, but at least his computer gets the weekdays right. :-)