Opinion • 8 June 2003

What’s up?

Summer is here and it is not only the heat and the humidity that has contributed to driving our tempo down and under, Saviour Balzan writes

Sagging breasts from sun-seeking tourists hit the headlines on the back page. Phones ring complaining that we are being sensational and crude.

What a pity that there are no modern day Maureen Germans to crusade against topless bathing.

No more Dom Mintoffs to take us out of a boring summer stupor.

No more headlines of a sex-starved Commissioner of Police or better still: two corrupt Judges, one of them a Chief Justice. And no more wrangling over the ups and downs of becoming part of the European Union.

The Doulos affair came as a welcome reprieve, while the inverted Love monument by Richard England retains the media’s ‘most hated’ award. A storm of news stories is called for to combat the drought that has hit these stricken columns.

What’s up?

Not much! Government, it appears is still finding its feet. Ministers are in no mood to wave their wands. As old faces find new chairs, new faces are nowhere to be seen.

There is not much happening, which is bad news for the media, hungry for stories.

In want of something better to do, war appears to have been declared on Joe Grima, the former Labour minister turned popular radio and TV commentator.

Libel actions delivered by GWU chief Tony Zarb and a declaration of war by Toni Abela and Wenzu Mintoff have been posted.

All because Grima has the gall to express the views of common folk about commoner things in his radio and TV show.

Now I am not one who will agree with all that Mr Grima suggests or portrays as right and wrong. But it irks me when I notice unfettered TV hosts taking offence for being the centre of so much attention. Is it not attention they are after?

I do believe that if one stands in high public profile one should expect to live with some measure of unfair treatment in the media.

One example comes to mind.

Before April 12, in the MaltaToday newsroom, we all knew who stood for Europe and who stood against it in the Labour party.

We all knew that John Attard Montalto, Michael Falzon, Karmenu Vella, Jose Herrera and Chris Cardona were europhiles. They said as much in private to their friends and, at times, even to their adversaries.

They would have denied it vehemently if we had published. But now, it is harmless to say so and perhaps beneficial to them to declare they were europhiles after all.

The same applies to the saga in the General Workers’ Union. I can understand the position GWU Deputy Secretary General Michael Parnis is taking vis-à-vis the Joe Grima statements on Tony Zarb. I would probably have done the same, but to give the impression that all is fine and peaceful at the General Workers’ Union is taking it much too far.

Once again, we are governed in the press by archaic press laws that fail to make the difference between commentaries and fact.

It is high time we come to fully understand the role of the press. Either we welcome free speech or else we control it and command it to say what suits us.