One News, old photos, and other talents

There is incompetence, and then there is the rather more refined craft perfected by One News: not even bothering to pretend you understood what you’re attacking.

My last column clearly caused a stir over there; less for what it said, more for what they needed it to say in order to fit the pre-written outrage template. And so, with the confidence of a student who didn’t read the book but is determined to review it anyway, they charged ahead, sword drawn, facts optional.

The result is by now familiar. A clumsy caricature of my argument, followed by ritual indignation. It’s less rebuttal, more pantomime. You half expect someone off-camera shouting ‘He’s behind you’ or ‘Dak in-Nazzjonalist aħdar qed ikompli’.

Let’s start with the point they so energetically missed. No, I did not say that PN proposals are uniquely bad. I said that once both parties have converged on the same promise-everything-to-everyone roadmap, their proposals effectively cancel each other out. Not because one is worse, but because they become indistinguishable.

At that point, the rational voter is left with one remaining tool: memory.

 And memory is where symmetry collapses.

 On one side, a Labour government whose years in office have been defined by corruption scandals so frequent they now register as background noise, punctuated by episodes of intimidation and a political culture that treats accountability as an optional extra. On the other hand, an opposition at least attempting, even if humanly imperfect, to edge back toward transparency and institutional responsibility.

Mine is not a subtle argument. It is not hidden. It is certainly not difficult to understand. Unless, of course, you work for Robert Abela’s tribal drummers.

 One News is not in the business of understanding. It is in the business of insulating. Its role is not to interrogate reality, but to edit it, ensuring that no uncomfortable comparison is allowed to take root, no inconvenient memory permitted to surface.

And so the machinery whirs into action: distortion dressed up as reporting, outrage manufactured on demand, repetition deployed in place of credibility.

Meanwhile, out in the real world, the absurdity has become almost theatrical.

Drive into Valletta, and you are greeted by a kind of Potemkin prosperity – schemes, rebates, cheques, incentives, each more generous than the last, all dangled with the subtlety of a neon sign. It’s designed to make you feel rich just long enough to forget who is paying.

And just for good measure, alongside the Labour Party pies-in-the-sky promises (designed to be lost in the next flurry of Trumpian rhetoric), you have billboard after billboard trumpeting the massive successes of, you guessed, Abela’s government.

You feel prosperous while perceiving the traffic, assuming you’re naive enough to believe all the guff.

And about that photo: If Super One’s intention is to intimidate me by ridicule, might I suggest updating it? The current one looks like it was salvaged from a defunct Facebook account circa 2009. You have to admire the consistency.

Misread the argument, misrepresent the conclusion, and recycle the image.

Anyway, if this is meant to intimidate, it doesn’t. If it is meant to persuade, it fails. And if it is meant to discredit, it might help to begin with the radical step of reading what you are attempting to criticise.

 And, if possible, using a more recent photograph. If I’m going to be misquoted, I’d at least like a better mugshot.