A story that Malta Today wants others to report so that it doesn't have to
No, it's not a story by Raphael Vassallo in Malta Today
Raphaell Vassallo, in today’s edition of Malta Today, writes about how he used to go to the Four Seasons Bar in Birkirkara – he didn’t even have the guts to mention it by name – where he would be privy to scenes of magistrates in their cups dancing on tables and leaking juicy bits of information about cases over which they presided.
Here it is:
“In fact, there was a time in my dissipated youth….around three or four years ago, as I recall – when I would frequent a certain tavern in the Birkirkara area.
I can’t remember the name, but I used to go there at all times of the year – spring, summer, autumn, winter – and lo and behold, there, perched at the bar, there would invariably be two upright (and sometimes horizontal) members of Malta’s fine judiciary…you know, just to keep an eye on things, and make sure everything was nice and ‘legal’.
I need hardly add that neither magistrate ever touched a single drink the whole time they propped that bar up….sometimes until the early hours of the following morning.
Nor did they ever dance on tables. And excessive alcohol never loosened their tongues, so that they would occasionally reveal bizarre indiscretions about individual cases (in the presence of an inquisitive journalist, no less).”
And the ‘inquisitive journalist’ never felt the need to write a story about it, or to report this horrendous state of affairs in Malta Today, on the principle of the public’s right to know.
Perhaps Raphael Vassallo wanted to carry on drinking with drunken, indiscreet, table-dancing magistrates at the Four Seasons Bar in Birkirkara, and that’s why he didn’t write about it.
Either that, or he’s a gutless coward, and the newspaper he works for is concerned with grinding its own axes rather than with its readers’ right to know that certain magistrates were to be found regularly drunk and indiscreet at the Four Seasons Bar in Birkirkara.
The odd thing is that Raphael Vassallo moves on from describing the scene to criticising me – that’s right, me – for not writing about it.
How could I write about what happened with magistrates at the Four Seasons Bar, when I have never been to the place?
The man, like his boss, must be off his rocker. He was an eyewitness to disgraceful scenes involving magistrates, which he never wrote about. And then he expects me to write about those scenes when I never saw them.
Worse still, he leaps from that mad assertion to an even madder one: that I didn’t write about those magistrates – whoever they are, because I certainly don’t know – because they are ‘Nationalist’. And that I only wrote about Magistrate Herrera because she’s a ‘jaqq Laburista’.
Well, perhaps Raphael Vassallo and Saviour Balzan could let us have more details on that particular story. After all, it’s not ‘sub judice’, is it, Saviour?
Make that two straitjackets – one for the boss and one for the employee.
And while you’re struggling into it, Saviour, take time out to tell your pet minx Julia Farrugia – who has clearly had an imperfect education – that, besides the sub judice rule having been blown out of the water by the European Court of Human Rights 30 years ago, it was previously used to protect the rights of THE ACCUSED and not of THE ACCUSER, and in a jury trial, not a hearing in the lower court, with no jury.
In this case, I am the accused, and I am more than happy to have as much discussion about the case as possible. So please, Saviour, do not try to inflict on me ‘rights’ that do not exist and which I do not want.
Not just cracked, but stupid with it.
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““In fact, there was a time in my dissipated youth….around three or four years ago”
Oh, Raphael and Joseph have something in common, they think the onset of middle age is youth. Talk about hanging onto the last thread.
[Daphne – Yes, by my reckoning he must be 38 at least, though I don’t notice that anything’s changed mentally since he was 21.]
“I can’t remember the name, but I used to go there at all times of the year”.
What memory does this guy have? Certainly not the memory of an elephant. I remember the details of 20 – 25 years ago, let ago four years ago, which almost feels like yesterday!
On top of that, he used to go to the bar “all the time” – and yet can’t remember the name. Are these people for real?
[Daphne – He does remember the name. He’s just being a total p***k as usual. That’s why he wrote that he used to go there ‘spring, summer, autumn and winter’ – because it’s called the Four Seasons Bar.]
So when do the great unwashed who don’t happen be enjoying life in Malta get a chance to read Vassallo’s article? Or Balzan’s latest column? Or the latest on what’s being portrayed as a Mutiny on the Bounty in Malta today? What’s wrong with these people? Even The Malta Independent and it-Torca are up and available the same day.
I would imagine they don’t want to lose what little advertising revenue they have.
“The odd thing is that Raphael Vassallo moves on from describing the scene to criticising me – that’s right, me – for not writing about it.”
Actually, the really odd thing is that you read that into the article. It isn’t there.
[Daphne – Raphael, like you I’m something of a specialist in the English language. Hence, I know that English, in its true idiomatic form, does not require things to be spelled out literally and specifically. The whole gist of your article is that I failed to write about the drunken magistrates at the Four Seasons Bar because they are Nationalist (I don’t even know who they are/were), but I wrote about Herrera because she’s Labour. You were also disingenuous in suggesting that the only thing I found to criticise about her was the size of her backside, when you know as well as I do – mainly because you read this blog religiously – that there have been several accusations borne out by hard facts, like the fact that she presided over the prosecution of her lover’s brother while concealing her affair with him.]
And if I didn’t write about the magistrates it’s because – a point you would have worked out for yourself, had you bothered to read till the end – I don’t think it’s particularly newsworthy.
[Daphne – If you don’t think that drunken magistrates dancing on tables and blurting out information about the cases over which they preside is newsworthy, Raphael, then you are either hopelessly corrupted or a hopelessly inept journalist. Or maybe, as I remarked earlier, you’re just a gutless coward scared of the consequences of reporting what you saw – an eyewitness account. Or maybe you just wanted to be able to carry on drinking with them and didn’t want to burn that particular bridge in the interests of a good story.]
It’s only a certain type of newspaper that takes an interest in what people do in their spare time, without making a distinction between private behaviour and public life. Drinking and talking too much is not a crime, unless the laws have changed while I wasn’t looking. And besides, you ought to know the difference between an on-the-record comment and an off-the-cuff remark.
[Daphne – Oh, really, Raphael? It’s all right for magistrates to get drunk in bars and discuss the law suits over which they preside? I imagine you belong to the school of thought – the very same school embraced by the more Sicilian of our compatriots – that as long as it’s legal then it’s acceptable. I’m sorry to have to drag you kicking and screaming into an approximation of developed thought on the subject, Raphael, but not all that is legal is acceptable – especially not when you are a judge or a magistrate. Yes, everyone has the right to a private life but get this loud and clear: rights do not exist in a vacuum. They come heavily encumbered by the concomitant duties, in this case – the duty to behave oneself and not to drag one’s office into the mud.]
This article was not only disingenuous, but downright idiotic. Mr Vassallo was duty bound to write about these misbehaving magistrates. What was he holding out for? A sauna and a shiatsu? Come on, for once, don’t just toe the editorial line, be a journalist, and come out with it!
[Daphne – I’ll guess he was toeing the editorial line. Saviour Balzan believes that magistrates and judges have the right to commit adultery in embarrassing circumstances, unlike police commissioners who head up the secret service and are instrumental in bringing to justice a cocaine traffickers whose brother happens to be ‘a friend’.]
The very few times I went to the Four Seasons, a long time ago, it was just a bar full of middle-aged separated hopefuls and calculating young ladies, and few men, hoping to hook a sugar daddy or a Mrs Bancroft. It’s notorious for that.
[Daphne – Kemm hawn nies iddisprati. Now they’re all hunting on Facebook. So frigging pathetic, jahasra. What a problem it must be, having to fish in such a titchy little pond, and hooking xeba toads and slippery eels.]
A lot of them can be found hanging around the 22nd storey of Portomaso Tower.
Daphne – ” but not all that is legal is acceptable ”
You contradict your own writings. In another article about abortion – you make mention so much of the legal change from a foetus to a baby and that it is ok to kill a human (living) foetus because legally it is a foetus and not a child (go figure that, 8 month 29 days foetus – Bang 9 months – hooray we’ve got a child)
It seems the legalistic aspect is acceptable when and where it suits you as otherwise ” but not all that is legal is acceptable”
[Daphne – Do please stop it. This thing has been done to death, and besides, we’re talking about something else here.]
Magistrates revealing ‘bizarre indiscretions about individual cases (in the presence of an inquisitive journalist, no less)’, as well as in front of the barman and God knows who else, and in a public place, is NOT a legal activity, apart from it being unacceptable.
Noel Arrigo was recently found guilty and sentenced for committing a similar illegality, though to a lesser degree. He “only” discussed one case, with one close friend, and in private.
Who was that “inquisitive journalist”? It can’t have been Raphael Vassallo as he has shown himself to be anything but.
Someone else has broken the silence. Have a look at this:
http://www.allangatt.com
“Some of the worst excesses of this country’s authoritarian past are being retched up and marshaled against Daphne Caruana Galizia, a Malta Independent columnist who popped the cork on a series of marital infidelities involving Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera, a high official of the Maltese justice system, and Robert Musumeci, a pretender to John Dalli’s vacated MP seat.
Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog features photos portraying the Magistrate in several unparliamentary poses, making goo-goo eyes at the camera and ‘partying like it was 1999 all over again.’ The pictures, sad to say, are nothing out of the ordinary: a bunch of people who didn’t realize they were that fat standing around squinting at the camera, then talking behind each other’s back and calling that drama a life because they hate their job. The implications, however, are fierce.
It is of course no crime when people who are not in stable relationships sleep around, but Magistrate Scerri Herrera is not other people. She is part of the judiciary – one of the pillars of government – and therefore an umpire of human conduct, which means her example must set the tone for the rest of us peasants. How are people supposed to respect the law when the law-givers are exhibiting the same traits they make a big show of stamping out in their clientele? Duplicity, disloyalty, adultery, abuse of power, conspiracy, evasiveness, suppression of information, backstage logrolling, and a host of other vices which would disgrace a nation of savages, have all made the courtrooms their natural habitat and feeding grounds.
Criminal charges have now been filed against Daphne Caruana Galizia, along with several libel suits intended to distract her, deplete her fighting spirit and scare public opinion away from her. I trust people will still put up a big show of support for her, because not many others are willing to assume the risks associated with bringing truth to power and revealing the loathsome bent for networking and self-promotion which animates many of the Molochs at the helm of our country.
If the government’s high claim to transparency and accountability is not to be exposed as a vote-grabbing sham and its public censure of MLP tyranny a load of mucker rhetoric, it is high time it lived up to its electoral commitment of taking allegations of the sort seriously; which includes clearing up why Judge Lino Farrugia Sacco and Magistrate Antonio Mizzi (as reported by The Times itself) defied calls to abide by the judiciary’s code of ethics and that no steps were taken to redress the situation.”
http://www.allangatt.com/
I find Raphael Vassallo’s columns all too often naive, and so is his style, very O-level. It surprises me, given his background.
What a load of garbage this is: http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100221/opinion/editorial
This country is turning more and more into a communist state where some are more equal than others and have all the essential tools to keep ordinary people in their place.
The funny thing is that there are no comments beneath the article. Did they decide to not publish any?
What that editorial doesn’t say is what points it considers worth investigating. It reads like a long drawn out, moral high horse excuse for not publishing anything at all on the matter.
That editorial was a bag of shite. One of the worst non-editorials I’ve read. Big fat nothing. Should be ashamed.
Ah, perhaps one of more august shareholders of Allied Newspapers had something to do with that.
“We would maintain that – as a rule – what a judge, magistrate, politician or whoever does in his or her private life is not a matter that should enter the public domain.”
I couldn’t agree more – which is why compromising behaviour in ‘private’ that affects their public role should be investigated.
Sunday Times editorial: “If a story they are working on is to make it into print, the editorial staff must be satisfied that every effort has been made to check the facts and verify them.”
One assumes that the reverse is also true: that facts and checked and verified before a decision is taken about not investigating a story.
“We would also consider it to be legitimate territory if the private conduct of a public figure either conflicts with, or compromises, the role he or she performs.”
In other words, they’re not going to publish anything on the subject, even though they haven’t checked the facts and verified them.
If there isn’t anything worth investigating, why do they feel the need to justify their inaction – and in an editorial, no less?
It appears that some rather heavy-handed action is taking place behind the scenes. Investigative reporting, it seems, is in need of investigation itself.
Breaking News. Musumeci forgave you D.
Gee whizz, you can sleep well tonight.
[Daphne – He’s such a w**ker. (I’ve been asked to use asterisks because lots of young people like this blog and apparently I’m a bad example.) But honestly. He forgives me while persecuting me through the courts. Like somebody far more (in)famous than he is, he speaks with a forked tongue.]
Forked tongue indeed. Didn’t he only this week embarass his current media champion by denying their story everywhere but in the paper itself?
The correct route would have been to write a letter to his own editor
Don’t worry too much, Daphne. The really young ones are only interested in the funny pictures.
The question remains – why didn’t Raphael Vassallo write a story about those magistrates and their breach of public trust?
He hasn’t told us yet.
Maybe because he was enjoying the show they supposedly put on. Then again, maybe it was all a figment of his imagination.
“The question remains – why didn’t Raphael Vassallo write a story about those magistrates and their breach of public trust?
He hasn’t told us yet.”
I have. You just weren’t paying attention. Or maybe you missed the post because it was camouflaged by Daphne’s own comments… which took up three times as much space as the comment they were supposed to address (interesting new definition of the word ‘moderation’, by the way.)
In any case, perhaps the point bears repeating. If you’re going to quote someone in an article, that person has to be informed beforehand. Otherwise it’s not journalism, merely eavesdropping.
[Daphne – What an ass you are, Raphael. I mean, really. You need permission to quote when you are the one asking for the interview. Permission to quote does not come into public interest stories of this nature. So let’s say you see a magistrate kerb-crawling a prostitute when you’re out walking your dog. You see the magistrate’s face. You recognise him. You see him stopping to pick up the prostitute. What do you do? Run up to him and ask him for permission to write about it? No, what you should do is write down what you saw before you forget it, then ring the magistrate and say: “I saw this. What’s your side of the story?” Then you write the story complete with his comments, if any. You’re just looking for excuses for your failure to report on a public interest story.]
On a separate note I find it amusing that so many of you have assumed this was a ‘breach of public trust’. I hope you all apply these newfound morals of yours to all people holding public office in all circumstances.
[Daphne – Why wouldn’t I, Raphael? Unlike Malta Today, which persecuted the Commissioner of Police about his ‘private life’ because of vested interests which I shall not go into here, I don’t apply the principle of two weights and two measures. Please ask your fabulous boss why he considers the secret sex life and attendant tahwide of a police commissioner worth reporting on, but not that of a magistrate. I’m DYING to know the answer.]
For instance, the curious case of the minister who went on a yachting holiday with a businessmen involved in the same multi-million industry he himself regulated at the time, and still regulates today (Daphne never wrote about this issue. I wonder why?); or the minister who flew about with casino operators, at a time when he was piloting a reform of the laws governing the casino industry (something Daphne defended, if you’ll remember).
[Daphne – Bollocks, Raphael. Read this: http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2009/10/12/next-time-fly-air-malta/. As for the other story, please tell me about it, because my memory fails me. Obviously, you are too fastidious to mention everyone by name.]
This brings me to Daphne’s earlier, deliberate misinterpretation of my article yesterday. The gist was not that Daphne ‘should have written’ about the magistrates I alluded to – how could she? She wasn’t there. The gist was that Daphne is, was, has always been and will always be immensely selective about whom she chooses to write about. And yes, it does boil down to a nothing more profound or mature than a Nationalist versus Labour prejudice… or ‘Arse and Them’, as I put it in the same article. The only variation occurs when she is desperately trying to divert attention from other matters concerning herself… in which case it doesn’t really matter whom she hits out at, even if they are private citizens who do not hold public office at all.
[Daphne – Yes, right, Raphael. I’m selective and Malta Today is….what, exactly? I know the counting-hall was packed with hopeful Laburisti when Robert Musumeci’s votes were being counted, but I hadn’t realised he had become another Laburist. The last time I looked he was a PN candidate. In fact, in this story we have perfect balance for once: the Labour magistrate and the PN politician. Lovely. And still, you didn’t cover it.]
” Please ask your fabulous boss why he considers the secret sex life and attendant tahwide of a police commissioner worth reporting on, but not that of a magistrate. I’m DYING to know the answer”
Yes, Saviour, so are many others here!
Daphne, are you capable of answering a single comment without resorting to name-calling? Probably not: after all, filter out the insults from your blog entries and there’d be hardly anything left.
Meanwhile here is a little pointer regarding the use of quotes and other issues of relevance to journalism. Evidently you need it, seeing as you consider anything that falls into your lap as fair game to use against others:
http://journalism.nyu.edu/ethics/handbook/privacy-vs-the-publics-right-to-know/
[Daphne – Oh grow up, Raphael. You’re what…38 now? And you expect me to believe that you drank with drunken, bean-spilling magistrates on a regular basis without writing about it because you had to ask their permission to quote them. And did you also need their permission to write a story telling the public that some of those who sit in judgement over them in the morning are drunk at night at the Four Seasons Bar in Birkirkara, and that you are an eyewitness to this? No, you didn’t.]
Oh and by the way, your choice of George Grech as an example is at best unfortunate. The issue back then was that he was being BLACKMAILED, no less, because he couldn’t keep his pecker to himself. If you don’t consider the blackmailing of a Commissioner of Police to be an issue of public importance, than you are plainly further gone than even I imagined.
[Daphne – My point exactly, sugar. I could easily have attempted to blackmail the magistrate: she was presiding over a libel suit in which I was involved at a time when I knew she was seeing rather too much of Musumeci’s pecker, as you put it, and others did not – including her spouse and his. It’s the risk of blackmail that’s the problem. But I guess you missed this salient point, just as you appear to have missed the bit where, while her relationship with Musumeci was ‘secret’, she presided over the criminal prosecution hearing of his brother.]
“Conveniently missed the bit” would probably be more apt.
“And you expect me to believe that you drank with drunken, bean-spilling magistrates on a regular basis without writing about it because you had to ask their permission to quote them”
Daphne, you have a bad habit of applying your own execrable standards to everyone else. It’s you, not I, who think this sort of thing is important, remember?
[Daphne – No, Raphael, practically the entire country thinks it’s important. If you removed yourself momentarily from your comfort zone, you’d be able to work that out. People don’t care whether a manager at the Roads Department boozes and bleats (though his bosses would and the bleating breaches the Estacode). But they certainly do care very much if those doing the boozing and bleating are the very ones who sit in judgement over them in court.]
But on the subject of expectations – are we seriously expected to believe that you didn’t know about Robert Musumeci’s relationship with Consuelo before some three weeks ago? And that when you found out, you were so morally outraged that you felt you had to do something about it immediately?
[Daphne – Yes, Raphael, I was outraged. I was outraged that the Nationalist Party allowed a cheat to contest the general election in its name. I was outraged when I saw the law report which revealed that the magistrate had presided over her secret lover’s brother’s case. But I kept my outrage to myself for a great variety of reasons and then I changed my mind. This is my prerogative. After all, unlike you I am not a reporter.]
Or were you aware about it a lot longer than that, but chose to keep it up your sleeve until such time as you needed a trump card… and even then, for your own, purely personal reasons?
[Daphne – Stories are always leaked for personal reasons, Raphael. You should know that by now. Nobody is going to telephone your newsroom with information about somebody else for altruistic purposes. They will always have a personal reason. Fortunately, I have a blog and I don’t have to ring a newsroom. Now it’s up to you to pick up the information and run with it….all the way to the Four Seasons Bar.]
Because it’s a little hard to accept the extraordinary coincidence that you only found out about it at a time when it could be conveniently used to deflect attention from that little story you were worried might appear in MaltaToday.
So why don’t you tell us, Daphne: when was it, exactly, that you first found about Consuelo and Robert?
[Daphne – Oh, right at the beginning. That’s why it’s going to be such great fun testifying under oath. And that’s why your Robert can’t pull the wool over my eyes as he did with your James Debono in Malta Today.]
I must have blinked and missed it. What I read here is a long-winded piece of puffery justifying your not writing about magistrates publicly discussing their cases in a bar. It’s the discussion of those cases that is newsworthy, not the details of the cases, and still less the drunkenness itself.
You are either being disingenuous or you have missed the point of being a reporter. Either way, you’re not exactly a canary in the mine, are you?
Here’s another question that foxes me: why is Malta Today so fixated on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s motives? If motives are what makes an issue newsworthy than I have to ask – what are Malta Today’s motives for deliberately deflecting attention from the crux of the matter? More specifically, what are yours?
I would be pretty upset if in the middle of a court case I was involved in, I found that there were judges gossiping about it in a bar.
I would be even more upset if I later found out that a reporter witnessed this and didn’t do his job and report it. I would be interested to read what the judges say when given the chance by the reporter to comment on their behaviour.
At the very least, if the reporter was a bit confused about public/private, he could have approached the judges and informed them that if they don’t correct their behaviour then he will be forced to report it. Not good enough I know, but better than sitting there night after night watching and listening to judges and magistrates who are clearly unfit to do their job.
Tip to the reporter: don’t apply for a job outside Malta. Any commercial editor who is running a quality paper will be amazed that you buried a scoop that is clearly in the public interest.
Of course you’d be upset. Your name is not Raphael Vassallo. And you don’t work for Malta Today.
So not only is Raphael Vassallo a hopeless reporter, but apparently he can’t read.
From the code of ethics for members of the Judiciary
http://www.judiciarymalta.gov.mt/file.aspx?f=576
“Members of the Judiciary shall not discuss out of Court cases that are pending in court. In full respect of freedom of expression members of the Judiciary should discourage persons from discussing, in their presence, cases that are sub judice.”