The ‘Libya Situation’ has really brought the media landscape to the fore. Every single media outlet in Malta has gone a little to its own extreme, like a drunken man letting go just past his fifth glass of wine. There have been opportunists ‘breaking’ un-checked and unconfirmed news, the reticent, apologies for ‘wrong’ reporting, retractions of apologies for wrong reporting and the usual moaners and gripers who stand by the side, do nothing, but then moan and gripe about everything and everyone else who does.

The opportunists were, at some point, causing mayhem, especially on Twitter, which was picking up our stories and rewiring them worldwide. At some point one of the stories on planetmona.com was picked up by several news agencies, including Babelmed and The Huffington Post. Our story was absolutely fact-checked and correct but this international linking only saved to make us aware of how thoroughly we needed to check and confirm our sources at all times. I say ‘we’ because some of our researchers and contacts are situated as far as Northern Europe and the US itself, as well as Britain and Libya. They are not interested in ego-inflating credits: they simply want the truth to out, as do we.

This was not apparent in some other situations. As expected, the two national major newspapers went haywire on self-publicity for web stats. This was expected. Good luck to them: we’re sure they will turn all this into advertising money very very soon.

The correspondents at planetmona knew that we needed to keep shtum about certain things, only breaking stories if we felt that they could be of benefit to human beings, rather than business enterprises.  On Wednesday we broke the story of the Maltese men stranded in Zeitouina after one of their daughters called me up to give me the information: their families in Malta were fearing for their lives as day after day the Libyan authorities failed to give their plane permission to land.

At some point on Thursday we had a request to retract the name of the oilrig. Everybody was fearing repercussions and although the story had by now hit twitter for the past 8 hours we agreed to retract until the men arrived in Malta.

Anthony David Gatt, from One News turned out to be quite the shining star tweeting breaking news which were, in their majority, checked factually before communicated. Matthew Vella and Karl Stagno Navarra, both from Malta Today and both tweeting constantly, have turned out to be stalwarts of the tweeting industry. The best’ tweets came from an electronic media specialist who was doing this simply because he wanted to and was cooped up at home sick. Some other ‘journalists’ turned out to be total screamers, retweeting stuff and in some cases simply publishing it, for the sake of being ‘first’.

Moreover, what is obvious on any given day became glaring during the past week. Malta’s Public Broadcasting Services, a press release-regurgitating station on any day, became glaringly slow. Major news agencies, including Al Jazeera, which is becoming more and more the station everybody wants to watch, were sending their best journalists to Malta to report live while the Maltese, trained incessantly in passive reporting, were reporting absolutely nothing.

On a particular day, Television Malta could not even bother getting the day’s footage from Gaddafi’s speech and broadcast the one from two days before. On another day, we managed to slip in two Catholic-based news items on the 8pm news. When I found myself wanting to throw a vase at the flat-screen tv I realised I had to stop watching this drivel, so I switched back to Al Jazeera, which, incidentally, the US still will not broadcast. TVM’s Keith Micallef was tweeting but sporadically so and when queried about anything never replied. Possibly he hasn’t actually got the hang of twitter yet.

The Maltese government seems to be holding on to the thread of information by the skin of its teeth: nothing really bad has happened yet but you do get the feeling that behind the scenes much screaming and constant smoking of cigarettes is going on. Instead of focusing on what must be done, some officials in Malta have actually taken to spying on people via Twitter and Facebook.

The one thing that became glaringly obvious almost from day one was how weak our government communications strategy is unless based on party propaganda and spin: everybody was gagging for information about what was happening at the airport and the ports but almost none was forthcoming from official sources. It felt as if the propaganda machine had immediately broken down, so flimsy and built on nothing had it been to begin with.

(I do not criticise the opposition communications strategy here as its role was to shut up unless, as will happen, Malta’s neutrality situation crops up, at which point one hopes they’ll open their mouths and do that with some sense).

Moreover I personally was threatened, stupidly enough, via e-mail by a ministry official who should have known better but does not have the maturity to. Tweeps were telling each other about people who had suddenly made an appearance on twitter so we knew to be on the lookout: they were, bizarrely enough in a situation where the middle east and northern Africa was in turmoil after years of regime situations, watching us.

I was not the only one either: a fellow blogger and journalist was actually threatened, via a Twitter DM (direct message) that he would be prosecuted by a guy calling himself…oh well I won’t write it now. I’ll tease him some more. We know who you are dear and you’d best get a grip right now.

Moreover on Sunday it became obvious to all that all governments, including the Libyan regime, had installed spies all over the medium and we put out (it’s called retweeting in twitter world and means literally forwarding the message) tweets that no more protest information was to be published. Experienced Tweebs RTd and crossed fingers that mainline media people would not be stupid enough not to figure out what was going on: twitter was going underground.

The most ironic media situation was that those who once militated for freedom of expression now protect the powerful and have become so powerful themselves as to bully and harangue – in print, electronic or otherwise - all of those who are not up to their ‘standards’ in any way, or even beg to differ in opinion or methodology.

Twitter, which I once hated with a passion for its restriction to 140 characters, became the way to communicate. Those who had not figured it out months ago, including one newspaper editor who suddenly registered and ended up tweeting as if he were sending personal messages (complete with insults) were at a huge disadvantage. The best article I have found on its strength in the arab world uprisings is this one.

Moreover the thing with Twitter is that any dissent immediately attracts the attention of huge worldwide groups such as #anonymous and suddenly you're not alone any more: if a regime is trying to oppress you, benign as it may be, they are watching. For those who are not so clued up about groups such as #anonymous, they have brought down, amongst others, the VISA website after it blocked funding to Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

A man in Egypt has called his newborn son Facebook. We would laugh were we not calling our own Maltese children Cleavage. Welcome to Malta! We knew you were coming.

 

The brilliant photo is by exiledsurfer on Artificial Eyes