Decisions we make in the blink of an eye might define the rest of our life and for many journalists, the choice to self-censor might be decisive, according to Matthew Caruana Galizia, an award-winning Maltese journalist and the son of journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia who was murdered in October 2017 for her reporting.
Speaking at the Free European Media conference at a panel on “ethical standards and self censorship” on 15 February, Galizia shared her mother’s example. Saying that his mother liked Westerns, he said: “Her first column in the 80s was called 'The good, the bad and the ugly'. She liked these movies because they were parables, there were good and bad guys, and guys standing in the background doing nothing are also part of the scenery, just like in the real world.”
He said his mother used to say: “The word choices cohabits with the word decisions.”
Galizia said, içten, decisions made in the blink of an eye such as whether to accept a bribe or not, define the course of our lives. “Such as the decision of a Swiss company to harass my mother for her reporting, or the decision of a private bank which filed a defamation case for millions of dollars to stop her from writing.”
Yet, she never self-censored and continued to report even after she found out that the Maltese prime minister was coordinating a series of lawsuits against her. Three months before her assassination, about how she could keep going so fearlessly, she said: “It’s an extremely difficult situation. It is the nature of my personality. You are either that way or not. Without a fighter's personality I would have stopped writing for newspapers in 1991.”
Yet, other journalists stopped after receiving letters from private banks that worked closely with the Azerbaijani and the Maltese government, Matthew Caruana Galizia said.
“In every act of self-censorship there is a person who censors themselves and there’s a person who forces that pressure. For every act of censorship of journalist, there is a politician applying pressure.”
Fighting self-censorship
According to Galizia one of the best ways to learn about fighting self-censorship is talking about the issue openly. “The issue should be talked about without any embarrassment or shame,” he said adding. “You need to discuss with your colleagues if you are being pressured into doing something you don’t want to do.”
He also said he faces a libel case launched by the Maltese prime minister for posting about corruption allegations about the prime minister on his Facebook account after these were already reported on.
“These lawsuits are designed to eat up your time and resources and deter you from publishing stories.”
He also said these should be documented, adding that he encouraged journalists to file any violations on the Mapping Media Freedom project of Index on Censorship.
Journalists self-censor
Marilyn Clark from the University of Malta, who shared the results of a survey in which 940 journalists from 47 Council of Europe (CoE) member states and Belarus were interviewed, said fear was a natural reaction, ingrained in our evolutionary progress.
The survey found out that fear, for journalists, led to self-censorship more often than they would like to admit. 31 percent said they toned down while reporting on sensitive topics, 23 percent said they have withheld information, 19 percent have shaped content to suit corporate interests and 15 percent have abandoned critical stories altogether.
According to Clark: “Self-censorship brings a lot of shame. The journalists were very honest on self-censorship despite this.”
The survey, however, found that their experience of facing pressure made 36 percent of the journalists surveyed tougher and more resilient.
