Question: how many of those who coerced their keyboard into condemning the Pia Zammit libel case decision against it-Torċa newspaper had actually read Magistrate Rachel Montebello's judgment?

Certainly not the artistic community, who overdosed social media with photos of themselves playing various roles on stage – from saints to sinners to a range of questionable beings in between – to solemnly hashtag solidarity with Pia.

Hardly surprising that thespians should invoke the theatrical and perhaps even less so on a premise of pure fiction.

Not even the media got it right in their majority. Zammit was defamed by it-Torċa, many said, because a photo taken of her many allo allos ago – donning a Nazi costume for the purposes of a play based on the famous British sitcom – had been used out of context to paint her in a bad light. 

I must admit to feeling a sense of consternation when I first heard about the outcome of this case. How could a magistrate, I moaned to myself and a few burst eardrums around me, possibly reach the conclusion that is acceptable for a media organisation to use a photo taken in a legitimate fictional context and pass it off it as a fact depicting the most grotesque of associations? 

On their front page, to boot. Is the law truly such an ass?

Then, I resurrected murky evenings of misspent childhood Allo Allo watching, which recollected that Michelle Dubois, the lady played by Zammit who would repeatedly say things only once, was about as German as Winston Churchill. She worked for the Resistance, not the SS, and wore a costume that was more stereotypically French than the Eiffel Tower. Helga, the object of Heir Flick’s robotic desires, was the Nazi private.

This profound research exercise prompted me to take another look at the offending photograph. This time I realised that Zammit was not actually wearing a Nazi uniform at all but was in fact wrapped in classic Dubois attire and holding up two swastikas for the camera. No harm in a bit of backstage banter, right, especially when Allo Allo had made a name for itself poking fun at wartime German officers?

Right. Until, that is, as is explained in the judgment – which,  it should be pointed out,  is no amateur whitewash – Zammit took it upon herself to post the image on Facebook.

What it-Torċa did was probably not libellous but it was certainly gratuitous, cruel, unwarranted and intimidatory

Yes, it was a decade or so ago. But even the society we were living in back then – which had not yet waded in neck-deep into the anger-driven social media age – considered Nazi symbols to be grossly offensive.

It was at this point that the tone of the article I was already framing in my mind suddenly changed. It-Torċa’s publication of the photo was not actually a misrepresentation of an actor at work but a moment of silliness being regurgitated and exposed for its insensitivity.

So, the real question is not whether it-Torċa’s front page item contravened the modern incarnation of defamation law in Malta – the magistrate seems to get things pretty much right there even if one may not agree entirely with her reasoning – but whether it was in the public interest to publish this photo.

While there should be little doubt that Zammit was unwise, naive perhaps, to pose in such a manner in the first place and, worse still, place the photo in the public domain, the context remains relevant: she posted the picture at a time when her role in the play was still very fresh in people’s minds.

Printing the image after a long passage of time muddies the waters somewhat.

So, what rationale could possibly be brought forward by it-Torċa to justify the timing of publishing such an image?

Had Zammit condemned someone posing with a Nazi image and they felt it necessary to highlight her hypocrisy?

Doesn’t seem to be the case.

She was, and still is, however, an active and vocal member of Occupy Justice – which has turned out to be a somewhat septic thorn in the government’s posterior – so that makes it eminently justifiable, right?

The answer to that question depends on your standpoint. Mine happens to reach the inescapable conclusion that what it-Torċa did was probably not libellous but it was certainly gratuitous, cruel, unwarranted and intimidatory.

But while all that is debatable, one point is beyond argument: it is simply not credible for one side to scream ‘freedom of expression’ while cheering on a bludgeoner of their enemy and then cry foul when one of their friends is hoist by a familiar petard.

As for the ill-informed masquerading deriding the magistrate’s judgment, that – along with Zammit’s photo – really would have been better off remaining backstage.

Steve Mallia is a former editor-in-chief at Times of Malta