The Front Page on the Front Line: The Maltese newspapers and the Second World War

Author: Martin G. Debattista Publisher: Midsea Books/ 2022 Pages: 379

At the height of the Malta Blitz, on Thursday, 27 November 1941, Mabel Strickland gave a lecture on the Functions of the Press at the British Institute. During wartime Malta, Ms Strickland was the editor of the Times of Malta and The Sunday Times of Malta. In this lecture, she stated that: “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, and the press, if it is to discharge its duty, must report the facts of life, the sad as well as the joyous. Life, which we endeavour to mirror, is not all laughter.”

True to its commitment, the Times of Malta was the main newspaper that brought to life in print, the vicissitudes of war in Malta. As the bombs rained down on the most bombed place on earth, the Maltese were kept abreast of the events of war through this main form of media, apart from the radio.

This book by Martin Debattista, which is already for sale in bookstores is one of a kind in that it focuses in great depth on the printed word at a time when Malta was faced by the second great siege. This subject may seem a “sideshow” of relatively small importance compared to the war in the sky above Malta and the hardships and sufferings brought to bear on the Maltese population. In reality, the media played a very important role during the war effort as this publication clearly reveals.

The book is well-divided into different themes that run smoothly throughout the publication as each theme ties with one another. The historical background on the build-up to the war is immaculately brought to light as well as the rise of the Strickland family as the founder and the first editor respectively of the Times of Malta with its launch in 1935. As the author states, her anglophile sentiments made her friends with the most influential British authorities in Malta. In doing so, the Stricklands were one of the spearheads against the pro-Italian Nationalists. The Italians during wartime were depicted as cowards with such titles as Mamma Mia and Corraggio Fuggiamo. These sentiments were not perfectly true, as the author substantiates in his research.

The author then goes into literacy and readership market and how the war changed the local press set-up. Censorship and printing problems as well as general wartime difficulties are also dealt with. Newspapers had lesser pages than prior to the war due to lack of material, staff and classified information.

Chapter four deals with the government at war, particularly with the setting up of the Information Office and publications. This chapter also deals with the development of propaganda in the Second World War as well as the Fog of War, which delineates between truth and propaganda, of heroes, cowards and quislings.

The book is also rich in giving a comparative table at Appendix I of the main military events in Malta and the rest of the world during the Second World War and the experience of the local newspapers in the same period. Another Appendix shows the Second World War as presented by the Maltese newspapers.

This book is a must read not only for those who are into studying the media as a subject in its own right but also to those who want to learn about the media at a time of peril, tension and death raining from the skies.

About the author

Martin Debattista is a passionate believer in the empowering possibilities of digital media, a strong advocate of free digital education and a longtime vegetarian by choice with an acquired love of tea. He is currently lecturing fulltime at the Institute of Tourism Studies and as a visiting lecturer at the Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences at the University of Malta. He is also a PhD candidate at the University of Salford, Manchester. With a strong background in digital media and digital education with over 25 years’ his latest academic research includes digital media curation and social media for the Master of Science (University of Hull), elearning design and using digital technologies for heritage interpretation. He is a pioneer in online and multimedia news service provision, being the first Maltese journalist to report extensively about Internet and technology in Malta and also the first editor of the first Maltese online news portal maltamedia.com. He has also managed the launch of the One Tablet per Child project in Malta.