The Times of Malta is 85 years young. Surviving thus far was no mean feat. It saw the political turmoil of the 1930s, the aerial attacks of World War II, the excesses of Mintoffianism and the challenges of the digital age.
It never missed an issue despite its offices being bombed in the war and gutted by Socialist thugs in 1979. It is both a shining example of quality press and resilience. Its former editor, Victor Aquilina, has chronicled much of its history in his excellent books.
Mabel Strickland is one of the principal figures which looms large in the history of this august newspaper. As one of the newspaper’s founders, Mabel Strickland worked hard to shape both this newspaper and the press in Malta.
Her political career never took off, and her political principles seem anachronistic in our day and age. Nonetheless, she remains a fascinating person whose legacy can still be felt and appreciated – not least in the pages of this newspaper.
In 1971, the Commonwealth Press Union presented her with the Astor Award for a lifetime of service to the Press of the Commonwealth.
The citation accompanying the award states that “she has displayed boundless energy in knitting together the common interests and the common purpose of the press, not only of smaller countries such as her own but those of the larger Commonwealth nations… she has campaigned staunchly for compassionate understanding of national problems, for press freedom, and for the training and recognition of journalists.”
The only other Maltese person to receive the Astor Award was Daphne Caruana Galizia. Caruana Galizia was given this award posthumously, after she was brutally assassinated in October 2017.
Both women were fiercely determined, and both faced opposition both in life and in death.
Just like Caruana Galizia, the vitriol directed towards Strickland did not end with her death. Her old foes kept on trying to discredit her. Yet, her vision for the press remains remarkably fresh and relevant today.
Following Strickland’s Astor Award, Progress Press printed a short 20-page pamphlet reproducing a lecture she gave at the British Institute in November 1941 on “The Functions of the Press”. Though this lecture was delivered just under 80 years ago, it remains a prescient reminder of why the free press is essential.
[Mabel Strickland’s] vision for the press remains remarkably fresh and relevant today
She recognises that the press is an industry which pays wages and has some commercial aims. Nonetheless, “it has not lost, nor will it ever lose, its vocation as the People’s University, supplying untainted information to millions”. This brings with it some responsibility; daily newspapers are the “most garrulous of human institutions” which will be held accountable by its readers.
While no newspaper claims to be infallible, “a free press provides its public with the living news of the day, views and entertainment, and in so doing records, as it occurs, history about people, places and events”.
Likewise, as an editor, she was aware of how difficult this job could be: “the modern editor does not impose his own individuality – he expresses the composite individuality of a vast and complex and delicately poised organisation.”
Delivered at the height of World War II, Strickland’s lecture is a product of its time. She complains about the challenges she faced and the opposition of the Italian Foreign Office about the newspaper’s perceived bias. Her imperialist leanings also shine through:
“Under the Union Jack, the press can safeguard its hard-won position as the guardian of democratic liberty, by being true to its peculiar mission as the unassailable and independent vehicle of public opinion.”
She is, after all, a product of her time. These imperialist leanings, however, made sure that she kept the English press as a model of all her endeavours: “like the English press, our press… never failed to give you your daily papers on time, containing the world’s news and the island’s news, not even on the nights Valletta suffered most, and Nazi bombs tore out the heart of the city, as they have done in London.”
On a different scale and in a different context, the COVID-19 pandemic is proving to be as big a challenge of survival to several newsrooms.
Nonetheless, the function of the free press is essential to any democracy. The press must “report the facts of life, the sad as well as the joyous”. In doing so, it may find itself in an uncomfortable position; yet much of this is necessary to ensure accountability in public life.
Just two years after the Times of Malta issued its first edition, Strickland was in Rome at the Vatican World Press Exhibition. She was struck by two inscriptions which she jotted down: “The condition of the press is a sign of the feelings of a country” and “To read the paper means to think with mankind, and feel with every man’s heart”.
She felt that these phrases were more than just clichés: “These words indicate the responsibility of those whose calling it is to reproduce daily in print, as faithfully as human media can permit, the thoughts and feelings of mankind, and of their own particular public. This is the service we are endeavouring to render”.
As the newspaper of record in Malta, Strickland’s vision indeed came to fruition.
André DeBattista, independent researcher in politics