Virtual Yawn

The last 18 months or so has been, in a way, open season for the bigots and racists who seem to fester with their filthy racist “comments”. All without a care in the world, through a range of newspapers.

Although really this is nothing new, it just seems to me that these people seem to have had the upper hand of late.

Everybody is entitled to an opinion, sometimes opinions seem to others to be extreme even nasty. But the sadness in all this is that whilst, in the privacy of our own homes or our own environment, we can say, insult, abuse and racially upset people to our hearts content, the fact that national newspapers openly publish these ramblings to an international audience is beyond the pale.

Above all of this is the fact many of the perpetrators of this filth and nastiness are not actually in possession of the facts. They generalise, they hurt, they sometimes (indeed most of the time) bare very little resemblance to the subjective or indeed the truth. They are polluters to the mind. These bigots scribble away and spew out their rubbish like a machine pumping sewerage into the sea.

The many people who read these “comments” feel offended, sorry and sad. Many feel personally attacked and some, like me, feel furious at editors and publishers allowing this garbage to be published to an international (or any) audience.

On top of all this are other generalisations — gays are perverts and queers, blacks are filthy dirty, women are second rate and second-class, the disabled are labelled cripples, Muslims ignorant bombers and so the list goes forever onwards in a perverse, nasty and ignorant way.

The time has come for responsible national newspaper editors to take it upon themselves to take responsibility for what they publish on the Internet. If they feel they need to publish it in their editorial then that in my mind is an even worse “crime”.

I have worked in, and being involved with, broadcasting all my adult life. I have worked in the United Kingdom, across Europe and in Africa. I have been associated with a great many people from a wide racial and cultural background. I have worked in countries where the relationship with my home country is dubious and uneasy and in other countries where relationships are strong and loving. Throughout my career I can honestly say that I have never worked or been associated with a broadcasting organisation that has knowingly transmitted and broadcast the level of racism and nastiness that is now being transmitted across the Internet and published by newspaper editors.

So whilst broadcasters internationally maintain levels required by localised regulation, newspaper publishers feel free to publish this insulting and nasty material.

I have noticed in the last 12 months that the level of racism in Malta perpetrated by a few Maltese is generating more and more footage within these newspapers online. All in the name of  “comments”. On several occasions I have tried, in vain, to redress the balance. On the few occasions when my comments, which I feel to be levelheaded and fairly straightforward, have been ignored and not published. I even wrote a handwritten letter which was sent by air mail to the editor of this newspaper.

In the letter I asked why he the management of this newspaper continued to allow this insulting and deeply rude rubbish to be published to an international audience. But alas I received — not surprisingly — no reply or acknowledgement.

So now, unperturbed by my strength of feelings and those other great many, I am writing again to the management of this newspaper to ask why they allow this level of nastiness to be published and why on occasions they do not allow people like myself to vent their comments online.

The silence and the lack of acknowledgement is the weak excuse in this. It also demonstrates that this newspaper revels in these racist nasty remarks. So we will see now when I write again.

Meanwhile I will use the power of the Internet myself as an individual to show to the world the other side of the coin if newspapers choose to ignore the voice of reason amongst this swamp of sewerage.