A tale of two Koreas…

It happens to the best of us, I suppose. And (let’s face it) ‘Il-Mument’ is not exactly the best newspaper this world has ever seen. 

All the same, I hesitate to make too much of the PN weekly’s hilarious mix-up between North and South Korea this week. You can probably guess why, too. It is invariably risky for anyone in the newspaper business to highlight mistakes made by other newspapers... no matter how astonishing these mistakes may be. The truth is we all have our off-days in this line of work; and we all get even the most basic, elementary facts wrong from time to time.

I, for instance, once wrote an entire article about arguably the most famous street artist in the world… and spelt his name incorrectly throughout. Not because of some glitch that had crept into the piece at proofing stage, I hasten to add. No sub-editors to pin the blame on, either.

No, indeed: the truth is even more embarrassing than that. All along, I actually thought that the correct spelling of his name was ‘Bansky’, as opposed to ‘Banksy’. That’s how I had initially read the name when I first saw it in print; and that’s how it came to get stuck in my head from that point on.

The only explanation I can think up offhand is that the incorrect version sounded more authentic to my ears than the real thing. ‘Banski’ chimes in nicely with an Eastern European nomenclature tradition that also gave us ‘Roman Polanski’, etc. It just sounded right at the time. Don’t ‘ansk-me’ why…

And it came as an earth-shattering surprise to discover that I was wrong, too. Even now, I hesitate to utter that artist’s name aloud… lest I mispronounce it in the same way as I had misspelt it in the article.

Then there are all the mistakes that I might have made, but was spared only by coincidence or good fortune. To give but one example before moving on: for years – throughout my childhood, in fact – I was utterly convinced that the English language contained a verb called ‘TO MISLE’ (pronounced: ‘my-zel’), which meant ‘to deceive’. 

It never struck me as odd that I had only ever seen this verb in writing; and even then, that it only seemed to ever exist in the past tense. So for years and years on end, in my mind I pronounced the word ‘MISLED’ – i.e., the past tense of ‘to mislead’ – as… ‘myzelled’. And I still remember that incredible moment of realisation when the correct pronunciation first dawned on me. It was a classic Homer Simpson ‘D’oh!’ moment, when the sheer force of decades of incredible stupidity suddenly smacks you full in the face.

And while I had ‘myzelled’ myself into that mistake… it proved difficult to ‘myzel’ myself out of it. Eventually I had to drum it into my consciousness through sheer dint of repetition: “Mis-led, mis-led, mis-LED”, etc… Only now, all these years later, do I feel fully confident when using that word in conversation...

So before turning our attention to what is undeniably Il-Mument’s finest hour: a word of self-critical caution. It could very easily have been me… or anyone else in the newspaper business, for that matter.  

But of course, it wasn’t me or anyone else. It was ‘Il-Mument’: a politically owned newspaper with a very conspicuous political bias. And this adds a whole new dimension to what might otherwise be laughed off as a bizarre editing mishap, of the kind that might one day happen to all of us. 

It is one thing to genuinely mix up North and South Korea out of sheer geo-political ignorance… but it is something else entirely to mix those two countries up deliberately, because it serves some kind of political purpose to mislead (ahem) your readers.

Let’s take a close look at this cock-up, shall we? The front-page ‘exclusive’ report, entitled ‘Labour and Muscat’s government off to North Korea’, claimed that Transport Minister Joe Mizzi would represent the government of Malta on the occasion of that country’s 67th anniversary celebrations. It also claimed that Alex Sceberras Trigona, former foreign minister and current special envoy to the World Trade Organisation, would accompany the minister on this official visit.

“This visit was kept completely secret and will come as a shock to everyone, as North Korea is a country in which dictatorship and repression are the order of the day,” Il-Mument went on. “Other democratic countries don’t have good relations with North Korea, because they know full well that democracy, liberty and human dignity are non-existent in that country…”

Joe Mizzi would later issue a clarification, explaining that he was actually going to Seoul – that’s the capital of South, not North Korea – to attend a conference about transport. The conference, entitled ‘ASEM Symposium on Eurasia Transport and Logistic Network, Seamless Eurasia: Making Connections’ will be held between 9 and 11 September – coinciding with the North Korean anniversary celebrations mentioned in the Mument report. 

“Mizzi will not be attending any celebrations whatsoever and he will not be accompanied by Sceberras Trigona,” a spokesperson for the Transport Ministry said. “The only thing that will shock everyone is the PN newspaper’s historical and geographical ignorance...”

So far, so bloody hilarious. But even from the above few details, you can already see that there is a good deal more to this ‘mistake’ than ‘historical and geographical ignorance’ alone. Clearly there was some truth to the information acquired by whoever wrote the article: the tell-tale detail concerns the date of the supposed visit, which turned out to be the only nugget of correct information in the entire article.

Knowing a thing or two about how journalists go about their business, I can roughly guess how the mix-up actually occurred. The journalist would have picked up on a planned visit to ‘Korea’ on or around 10 September… he or she would have then run a search based on the country name and the date… the first thing that would have popped up was North Korea’s 67th anniversary celebration…and hey presto! From there it is but a small step to jump to the otherwise astonishing conclusion that Mizzi’s planned visit must have been intended to commemorate that particular event.

Up until this point, it’s the sort of mistake that could conceivably be made by any newspaper, regardless of political orientation. The only difference is that any other newspaper would (if it went about things properly) then go on to phase two, and try to actually verify the assumption. A simple phone-call to Mizzi’s ministry would have set the record straight within seconds. Evidently, this phone-call never took place. Equally evidently, then, Il-Mument was not even remotely interested in verifying the story at all. Why not, I hear absolutely nobody asking? Well, for all the reasons given in the same article… which went on to lovingly detail all the widely-known historic connections between past Labour governments and North Korea, dating back more than 30 years.

At this point, it becomes impossible to separate the ‘mistake’ from the political advantages to be gleaned from making it. It’s almost like an unspoken rule of political reportage: any nugget of information (no matter how woefully inaccurate) that can conceivably be used to embarrass one’s political opponents, WILL be used for that purpose. And given the absurdity of the political context we are currently living in, it doesn’t even matter if the mistake is exposed within days or even hours of publication. 

Consider, for instance, the following comment from underneath our online article: “I still believe what is in Il-Mument, and it would be best that this newspaper investigate the story too rather than take the government spin on it.”

I don’t know about you, but personally I find this attitude both scary and sad. This reader is perfectly ready and willing to believe a blatantly fabricated story, in defiance of all the available evidence… not because of any valid reason to suspect it might be true; but only because the lie coincides with his own political bias. 

Unsurprisingly, that is exactly the same reason why Il-Mument proved ready and willing to publish this article in the first place, when it knew (or must have known) that it was at best dubious. What matters in this particular instance is not ‘the truth’ behind the story; but only how much damage a well-timed lie can cause to ‘the other side’.

And this changes things drastically. Suddenly, it is no longer a case (as naively suggested by Joe Mizzi) of the PN paper’s ‘historical and geographical ignorance’. Il-Mument knew perfectly well that Mizzi was not going to North Korea; just as it is fully aware of the precise difference between the two Koreas. This was not a mistake born of ignorance. This was a deliberate deception built on a number of other factors, including:

One, the fact that a politically-owned newspaper like Il-Mument knows it can automatically rely on the blind faith of at least some of its readers: who, for want of a better word, are little more than a bunch of brainwashed zombies.

Two: the same newspaper also knows it can rely on the hatred this type of reader harbours towards all things Labour… a hatred so profound and deep-seated, that it can blind people to even the most conspicuous realities.

Three (and this is the part I honestly don’t get), newspapers like ‘Il-Mument’ seem content to only cater for this particular category of reader – i.e., the die-hard political buffoon – while ignoring the broader category of readers who actually buy newspapers to be informed of facts.

Why do I find this hard to understand? Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps because ‘Il-Mument’ is owned by the Nationalist Party, and – from my own personal experience talking to (and interviewing) many of its exponents – I also know that the PN is home to a lot of intelligent people.

How do intelligent people willingly associate with the sort of naked, regressive ignorance enshrined by newspapers like Il-Mument? How do they endure being placed in the same bracket as such bald, stupid and childish prejudice? And – more pertinently, seeing as the same PN hopes to one day get back into power – how can the party possibly ever expect to win back lost votes, when its newspapers appeal only to the brainwashed masses (who will always vote for them anyway)? 

To put the question succinctly: on what basis does the PN expect and demand the support of intelligent people, when the party seems hell-bent on making itself attractive only to imbeciles?

Try as I might, I have to admit I find this totally beyond my ability to comprehend. But then again, juts look at all the mistakes I’ve made in the past... maybe I’m just not darn clever enough to appreciate the subliminal genius in the PN’s choice of political strategy.