I must admit it. I am intrigued by the double murder that happened on the first morning of the year. Just for the sake of anyone not living in Malta, this horrific happening does tick all the right boxes in terms of morbid fascination. I have watched countless* episodes of C.S.I and don’t think I have ever seen anything similar.

Essentially, what seemed to be a home invasion/ robbery gone wrong turned out to be something which is at yet uncovered. In summary, though, the details we do know are:

• Person A somehow entered the penthouse of person B at around 6.30am on New Year’s day.
• Person B was in bed with his wife in a room with their twin babies, who was sleeping.
• The next fact we know is that both person A and person B were found dead of stab wounds in the kitchen of the apartment.
• Both men appeared to have killed each other, and the only weapons used were two steak knives from the apartment’s kitchen.
• The wife and children were (physically) unharmed and the wife said she remembers the husband saying something along the lines of “not in front of my kids”.
• Person A is a young man who had spent the night working in a bar, then in another bar until he was asked to leave.
• Person B, who is married to the daughter of one of Malta’s most powerful businessmen, spent the evening at home with his family, drove his parents home and headed in for an early night.

There was very little hard evidence released officially to the press and most of the rest of the information came from Person B’s father-in-law.

The second part of the nightmare, however, started the following morning in what passes for press on this God-forsaken island. First of all everyone raided both people’s Facebook profiles for pictures – including one of Person B with his twins in his hands.

Next the conjecture started. I can fully understand that the whole population turned into Horatio Caine for the week, but the press should have had enough sense to only report what was actually happening.

The police said they ruled out robbery, The Times (of Malta) interpreted that as “Person A went into the house with the intention to murder.”

MaltaStar, in some of the worst English to hit the internet, suggested that the men were in a relationship. No sources, just that.

Another Maltese newspaper suggested the wife was involved, claiming that she must have finished off the intruder.

Where has journalism gone? Where are the good old days of only publishing a story when you have one? Where is the respect for the families of the deceased? Why does the Maltese dedicate hundreds of column inches and hastily produce TV programmes about the event when there is absolutely no clarity into it?

It is natural to be intrigued by such a horrific event – and I can understand why people would want to know the truth as soon as possible. This, in fact is why CSI is exciting to watch, but in CSI we get closure at the end of the day, usually forty minutes after the “murder”. If people cannot see the difference between fact and fiction, then I think we need to start educating them.

The press, for starters, should be the ones to be advocating caution and restraint. But then again caution and restraint does not push stats up – so expecting this to change any time soon is an impossible dream.

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On a separate, but related note, I was shocked by the level of English being used in Maltese papers nowadays. I remember a time when at the very least The Times had impeccable grammar and was relatively free from mistakes. In my research for this post I stumbled upon some of the worst English I have ever read (though not from The Times, to be fair).

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*Gosh, I attempted a quick count there and it was shocking too – around 600 episodes if you include C.S.I. Miami and C.S.I. New York.

(#6 of 366 X 2012 project)