No kangaroo courts, but a proper press regulator

There was nothing surprising about the reaction of TV presenter Lou Bondì to a decision by the Press Ethics Commission that declared a blogpost he had penned on Illum editor Julia Farrugia, had been an act of character assassination. His instant denigration of the PEC as a kangaroo court mirrors the similar reactions of other media owners and editors who do not take the PEC seriously enough to realise what should be good for Maltese journalism.

Most worrying of all, it puts paid to the myth that the press can be self-regulated. And if the press cannot subject itself to public contrition when it undermines the trust of its readers, how can it be an advocate for public transparency and fairness if it doesn't hold itself to account?

The only alternative is to take recourse to the law courts, where expensive libel suits and garnishee orders threaten the survival of media companies, employees' livelihoods, and condition the way journalists report and ultimately impinge upon the fourth estate and its role in a democracy.

Surely, there must be another way.

I have previously criticised the decision by the PEC that declared that Julia Farrugia's report on the video of PBS chairman Joe Mizzi had been an act of character assassination. I felt this story merited readers' interest, justifiable by the fact that Mizzi was a publicly appointed officer on public duty at the Eurovision Song Contest; enjoyable as it may have been, there was no doubt that many of our colleagues and critics would accuse us of sacrificing the integrity and respectability of a publisher like Joe Mizzi at the altar of public transparency.

Today, I find little to disagree with its decision on Bondì's own bout of person-slaying, and maybe that's because it was an easy job for the PEC to deliberate on such a senseless and indulgent attack on a journalist. But if a reader had to understand what an act of character assassination is, the PEC's decision on Bondì is a proper illustration of such.

While Bondì doesn't give two shits about the PEC (like many of his contemporaries in the Maltese media industry) I take little comfort in thinking that the press can retain such a level of haughtiness as it degenerates into a clash of egos across some real, and some imagined, ideological lines: the ideologies of being for the powers that be, and against the powers that be.

Since MaltaToday went online, we have been confronted by a daily army of readers who check our own facts, who hold up our reports to the light of comparison, on the grounds of fairness and integrity. Technology took a newspaper previously confined to paper and ink into the unlimited space of the world wide web, but it empowered readers to hold journalists to account as well.

This alone is why we need a press regulator more than ever: a form of Ombudsman that can offer fair, cheap, quick mediation and arbitration for injured parties and the press itself. Call it an arbitration centre for the press, a way of dealing with improper and unethical reporting before going to the courts, built on a modern code of ethics and interpretation of European case-law on the law of libel and slander, privacy and data protection.

Without any form of legal power, the PEC is destined to be mocked as a kangaroo court by newspapers and journalists who believe they are infallible... bad, and old news for the Maltese press.