Julia, try a red bathing suit this time

Blue or Red, Julia?

In May, Julia Farrugia, the editor of Illum, and Saviour Balzan and Roger Degorgio's maltatoday.com.mt ran a story headlined Ic-Chairman tal-PBS Patata. The accompanying video showed Joe Mizzi, the man in question, staggering around in an unconscious state, twice falling to the ground. The Illum/MT posse had a clear intention - to dupe readers and viewers into thinking that the PBS chairman was dead drunk and thereby get him to resign. The aim was achieved.

The instant instinct of all men and women of goodwill, particularly those who know the man, was that Joe Mizzi was set up. After the Eurovision, he did not walk into a Dusseldorf nightclub. He walked into a trap with a spiked drink waiting for him.

That much we knew. But now, in light of a 19-page report signed by Dr Kevin Dingli, chairman of the IMG's Ethics Commission, we know much more. Not that I needed to confirm it, but Julia Farrugia, Saviour Balzan and Roger Degiorgio come across as three nasty pieces of work. Here is why.

1. The video was shot with two professional cameras. Yet Julia Farrugia, the ex-Super One TV newsroom hatchet woman, admitted that she had no cameramen of her own or foreign contacts on the spot. Lo and behold, One TV had its crew in Dusseldorf. Now it was only last year that Ms Farrugia took off her Illum editorial hat and paraded herself in a bathing suit on One TV to raise funds for her party's station. And guess who defended Julia in front of the Ethics Commission? Toni Abela, the PL deputy leader. Now you join the dots.

2. The Ethics Commission discovered that Julia Farrugia published two versions of the video. She claimed that the reason was to remove Maltese swear words heard in the background. How cute. The Dingli Commission, obviously, was not taken in. It concluded that Julia took out the words "in an effort to hide the truth" about who took the video and "to erase every possibility for mistrusting ... what was shown".

3.  Joe Mizzi fell to the ground once. Yet Julia Farrgia published a version of the video showing two falls, the same one repeated. Nifty. Maybe for an encore Julia Farrugia will now show us a video in which Raymond Caruana is shot twice in the PN Gudja club.

4. Julia Farrugia was found guilty of not running proper checks. In fact, the Commission concluded that Julia Farrugia departed from the premise that the story was true and then proceeded not to check it. And she was found guilty "character assasination". Now this woman is the vice-President of the Institute of Maltese Journalists. As Groucho Marx once said, I will never join a club which would have me as a member.

5. Julia Farrugia's lawyer, Toni Abela, tried to peddle the line that the word 'patata' does not necessarily mean drunk. Naturally, the Commission told him to go tell it to the marines. But what do you expect from Abela, a man who wrote that the Maltese government was somehow implicated in the selling of arms used in the Libyan conflict. Patata indeed.

6. Following the ethics of a hyena during the wildebeest migration season, it also transpires that Julia Farrugia interviewed Joe Mizzi about the story when he hadn't even seen the video.

7. The Dingli Commission concluded that, in line with the same jungle ethics, Julia Farrugia did not give an answer to a key question: Why didn't she ask the Maltese cameramen why they failed to give assistance to a barely conscious man in imminent danger of falling off a staircase railing to his death? Maybe at that time she was asking the cameramen for their opinion on the colour of the swimsuit she should wear on the next Super One TV fund raising event.

Now that the case is over, Julia, Saviour and Roger have time on their hands. Here are my humble suggestions for them to occupy it. Julia Farrugia should try to find videos or photos of the murder of Raymond Caruana. She might recognise someone she knows. Saviour Balzan should tell us if it is true that as a John Dalli groupie he had the idiotic audacity to ask a top PN official to run the party media during the leadership race in 2004. Roger Degiorgio, well forget him. He's too busy doing the cocktail party rounds and frantically corralling PN politicians to tell them he is still a nationalist. Unfortunately, he does not hang around them long enough to hear them giggling behind his back.