Letters to the editor - November 22, 2021
Reporting facts I was devastated to read about the toddler falling two storeys (November 16). I wonder, however, why the report seemed to go beyond the actual facts: “a toddler fell off a balcony…” The circumstances of whether his mother was at home and so on seem perhaps superfluous because the background is not known, surely to be determined later by a magisterial inquiry. It is not productive to feed public speculation in what may turn out to be the worst tragedy to befall somebody. Unfortunately, in “Christian” Malta, people never allow the truth to get in the way of automatic judgement and condemnation. (Look at the story of that Libyan national, who also tried to save somebody from drowning last week.) Similarly, there is too much ‘reporting’ in general where if the person/s involved is not Maltese (a terrible sin, it seems in xenophobic Malta) this is duly reported even when it is totally irrelevant to the story (for example, one’s ethnicity might be important to locate somebody etc.). There is already a tidal wave of venom being facilitated by today’s (anti) social media. One I will never actually know first-hand, because I wouldn’t dream of being on any of them.