Press Club ‘unhappy’ with dismissal of junior journalist

Contacted immediately after the meeting, chairman Malcolm J. Naudi told MaltaToday that it was not customary for the IGM to discuss employer-employee relations.

“We are not a trade union, and do not normally intervene in employment issues,” Naudi said. “As a rule, the only exceptions are cases where journalists are victims of physical violence. However, there have been cases in the past when we were approached by members with individual complaints, and when this happens we would examine the complaints and decide whether to take action accordingly. I wish to stress this was not one of these cases: Bonanno is not a member of the IGM, and at no point did he approach us.”

Nonetheless, the IGM board did discuss Bonanno’s dismissal, and reached a common position. “We are dissatisfied with the way the incident was handled,” Naudi explained. “We feel Bonanno should have been given an opportunity to make his case. As things stand we feel he was not given a fair hearing. We are not happy with the way the employment was terminated.”

Matthew Bonanno, 23, was sacked from his position as junior journalist at the Times last Friday, following an exchange he had had on the social networking site Facebook with a University student who went on to publicly insult IT Minister Austin Gatt on campus.

The exchange was duly picked up by Lou Bondi on his blog, and presented as evidence of ‘collusion’ between the journalist and student.  The same spin was given to the incident on Daphne Caruana Galizia’s blog, which also announced his dismissal in triumphant tones.

But Bonnano himself supplied a different version of events.

“What I did was this,” he wrote on his Facebook profile. “The day before the incident, I posted on Ms Abela Garrett’s wall, ‘Guess who’s going to be at University tomorrow?’ I barely paid attention to her comment in which she told me she was going to give me a good story. So much so that I didn’t even tell my editors about it, and as a result did not attend the event, which by the way was public and not in the least bit top secret. Therefore, the whole thing was not orchestrated in any way.”

Bonnano added that if he really, intentionally wanted to orchestrate something like that, he “would have messaged her privately, not joked semi-publicly on her Facebook wall. In the words of John Cleese in a Monty Python sketch, I may be an idiot but I’m no fool.”

He also clarified that he did not write the article which was afterwards criticized by bloggers as having ‘glorified’ Abela Garrett’s behaviour..

“I was busy following George Pullicino around a valley at the time and call him as my witness. It was not me who decided to portray Ms. Abela Garrett as a heroine.”

Bonanno also revealed that he had been informed of the termination of his employment by means of an email.

“The only thing I was disappointed about was not being given the chance to explain myself or apologise, in person. I was of course asked to explain myself via email on Thursday, since I was off that day, but I kept it brief and intended to explain myself fully, in front of the editors, the next day. On Friday, after being left in the newsroom for about two hours, I was called to HR and told my probation was terminated with immediate effect. To be honest I didn’t give my side of things, seeing as I wasn’t asked to. I don’t beg.”