Independence is not Impartiality

From The Times of Malta
Thursday, May 11, 2006
Independence is not impartiality
by Ranier Fsadni

“Which opinion-maker in Malta,” the Malta Labour Party’s general secretary once asked on Bondiplus, “is really politically independent?” I did not hear any one in the studio answer his question. I wished I could have been there to say: “Quite a few of us. Being politically independent is no great intellectual or moral achievement.”

Jason Micallef’s question carries an assumption that independence implies neutrality; or that at least one cannot show consistent partiality. The assumption spouted up again a few days ago, when Alfred Grixti, editor of the MLP’s online newspaper, criticised The Times (according to the report carried in The Sunday Times) for “giving more space to Nationalist-leaning articles in its editorial content than those favouring the MLP”. That is, the newspaper was not being true to its declared independence.

I suspect the assumption is shared by the majority in Malta, and that most people follow Mr Micallef in reasoning that few, if any, people in Malta are therefore truly politically independent, since most people have a preference for one party over another. So it is worth spelling out why both assumption and inference are mistaken.

But first, an observation: on the foregoing grounds, virtually all serious opinion-formers in Euro-America cannot be considered to be independent: general political preferences are one factor usually governing their selection. And it is a rare, good opinion columnist whose political outlook is unknown. How could it be otherwise when political philosophy is central to political appraisal?
William Safire, the former New York Times columnist, was (and was meant to be) the libertarian conservative voice on the mostly liberal (in the US sense) newspaper. Most Guardian columnists are fulfilling their role, and not compromising it, by individually representing one of the various positions that is encompassed by the liberal left: George Monbiot is the green liberal, for example, and Polly Toynbee the libertarian social democrat. It would be difficult to find a major European newspaper or political magazine whose columnists and editorialists do not have an established political profile.

Yet, no one seriously questions their independence on these grounds. Independence is not confused with partiality or bias. Nor is it confused with intelligence. One can be independent and bigoted, as well as independent and stupid. What is so impossible about being an independent elitist, racist, homophobic, male chauvinist bigot without two intelligent ideas to rub together? Independence simply means not being dependent on a person, organisation or institution, which usually means being in a position to take no orders and no money.

In practice, Maltese newspaper readers recognise the character of independence. Much (by no means all) of the interest generated by the columns of Lino Spiteri and Alfred Mifsud arises because they give readers that rare thing: a Labour viewpoint that is free from MLP control. Their political independence is not just a result of their state of mind: when they were active within the MLP, they were respectively the same person, with the same mind, but not independent, because they had to keep within the limits of party discipline; and it showed.
Independence does not mean that one has to steer or tack between different sides of the political debate. Indeed, over-caution can be the sign of fear, caused by a lack of independence.

A journalist can show complete partiality and still be independent. Does it follow that l-orizzont, the General Workers’ Union newspaper, could qualify as politically independent even if it poured scorn on the Nationalist Party (PN) in each edition? Yes. I doubt that newspaper’s independence not because it is virulently anti-PN but because it gives me the firm impression that it is not independent of the MLP leadership.

Sometimes a news organisation is both independent and impartial. The BBC, for instance. But the distinction between the two characteristics is clear within the Beeb. Its former political editor, Robin Oakley, who came over from The Times, was known to have Conservative sympathies. His successor, Andrew Marr, had a long paper trail of liberal opinions: he had been editor of The Independent and a columnist (he called the Catholic and Anglican bishops, on one occasion, a bunch of silly fools). But no one questioned their independence. Some questions were raised, in Mr Marr’s case, about his ability to be or appear impartial – but he succeeded, and was a popular political editor.

The distinction also emerges when one considers organisations that are impartial but not independent – the PBS newsroom, for instance. The MLP questions its impartiality, of course; but an outbreak of PBS newsroom independence would unite the political parties in their opposition to the outrage.

Understanding the nature of journalistic independence is not the same as practising it. But it is necessary to understand if one is to value and defend it.

Farewell Punch (and Judy)

CATEGORY: OPINION
SUBJECT: POLITICS/JOURNALISM
SOURCE: THE TIMES, TIMES OF MALTA

David Cameron is the new leader of the Conservative Party in the UK. Our own, Maltese, Times dedicated its editorial to this new appointment – which only goes to show that somebody at Strickland House still labours (or conserves) under the illusion that The Times of Malta is an independent conservative establishment of its own right.

But back to young David (I am ready to wager that it will become Dave soon). At 39 he is young indeed and has already (like Blair in his time) begun to draw comparisons to that myth called William Pitt the Younger. What I like about Dave is his intention to break with the past… which does take some guts when you are head of a party called Conservative. Reading today’s Times (the original) we could hear about the person without experience who was elected to head the party. As always we hear the idealistic story, the one the person sets out with before facing the realities of politics. It is pleasant to hear but one cannot help but ask “How long will this idyllic wishing last?”.

I loved the Punch and Judy politics quip. It is an ideal that I share with a passion. Here is what Cameron said:

“And, in a swift illustration of his determination to reclaim the centre ground for the Conservatives, he broke with the legacy of Thatcherism, declaring that there was such a thing as society, and promised a new style of politics that would mean the Tories backing the Government if they thought it was right for the country. He told his party to stop grumbling and to accept modern Britain as it was. With the authority of his massive victory behind him, Mr Cameron prepared to lay down the law to MPs, saying that he wanted an end to “Punch and Judy politics — the name-calling, backbiting, point scoring and finger pointing.”

Apart from the beautiful middle-finger to grammatical convention by the Times contributor who starts a sentence, nay, a paragraph, with the word “And”, this Grand Plan of Cameron cannot but be appreciated. Stop the bickering and become real, mature, responsible politicians. The joke (and irony) is on us. On the electors of democratic governments worldwide. Because (yes I start sentences with Because too) you see, we are now come to a point where electoral promises and promising politicians are simply what they were meant to be in the first place.

There is such a thing as society indeed…. good luck David!

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This post was originally posted on J’Accuse

Paradoxical Integration_INT_OPN

Category: Interest
Subject: Racism / Multiculturalism
Source: Times of Malta

Ranier Fsadni writing in The Times of MaltaThe violent rioting in France, which has involved looting, violence and destruction, has now seen emergency laws invoked. The riots and their spread have drawn a shocked European attention to a landscape of poor housing estates and multi-ethnic deprived neighbourhoods and raised questions about the prospects of multiculturalism in Europe. But these events cannot be explained by stock explanations – of either the left or the right.

When the far right crows that the riots show the failure and futility of multiculturalism it ignores some of the objective features of the French situation.

The rioters represent a minority of French citizens of immigrant background. Many of them are juveniles, school drop-outs, whose behaviour has shocked their communities and which has been condemned by their religious leaders. Some of the rioters, a fraction, are criminal delinquents and another fraction does not have an immigrant family background.

Above all, the idea that the rioters are rejecting some European idea of authority in favour of the authority of their own “indigenous” culture is mistaken twice over.

First, as the study of various groups of alienated youth of immigrant background in Europe shows, such youth tends to be alienated by all authority – including their own traditional religious authorities.

Second, it is not clear that Europe offers any model of cultural authority. Widespread relativism, at least in its pop TV-discussion form that moral judgements are not true or false but expressions of individual feeling or desire, offers no authority that can be accepted, let alone rejected.

Nor should a focus on the initial causes of the rioting make us forget that the riots, while obviously not caused by the French authorities, were inflamed by certain official decisions. When the Home Affairs Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, with his eye on his presidential prospects, called the rioters “vermin”, he incited the sympathy of the wider law-abiding community for the young rioters who are justifying their vandalism and violence as a response to institutionalised racism. The wider community, again, has been estranged by the police decision to tear-gas a mosque: a decision made for security reasons but mistaken, and no apology has been offered.

The analysis of one of France’s leading students of teenage criminality, Hugues Lagrange, emphasises the lack of hope engendered by 20-30 years of educational failure and high rates of unemployment in poor neighbourhoods. Part of Mr Lagrange’s analysis does confirm the claims (of “the left”) that these are the results of insufficient integration – say, by an education system that does not adequately cater for the special needs of children of migrants. Dyab Abou Jahjah, president of the Arab European League, a movement growing in Belgium and the Netherlands as well as in France, speaks of an alienation caused by systemic denigration and unjust discrimination in schools and at work, the resentment of being treated as second-class when you are a fully fledged citizen.

Interestingly, however, Mr Lagrange sees the problem as being in part the unintended consequence of highly successful integration: the mobility of those who flourished in the education system or who made money, escaped their shabby neighbourhoods, leaving what remained to become an environment of failure.

This paradoxical consequence of successful integration is confirmed by other sources. In recent days the president of a women’s rights group for French Muslim women, of immigrant background, has confirmed that most women like her are not only “integrated” but happy to be French citizens, enjoying civic and political rights that they would not have in their parents’ or grandparents’ countries of origin.

And the European experience of Muslim migrants suggests that the greatest difficulties have to do not with the first generation, which is generally eager to settle down peacefully in its new homeland, but with the second and third generations: the causes for alienation clearly cannot be blamed straightforwardly on the cultural background. Other factors must be sought and addressed.

One of these factors has to be immigration policy itself. It would be futile for Europeans to clamp down on immigration when Europe’s current economic need for it is analogous to the need that countries like Canada and Australia had a few decades ago. Those two countries, however, had a more systemic policy than the Union has now. It is such a policy, of controlled immigration, a control that addresses not just numbers but informal agreements with countries of origin, which the Union needs to formulate. The aim would not be to suppress multiculturalism but to practise it well.