This being seven and a half years since my aunt was assassinated for her journalism, I want to focus on her as a woman.
I’ve spoken a lot about Daphne as a person, but I’m really thinking about her as a woman doing what she did: investigating and exposing the bad behaviour of (it must be said) mostly men.
I work in research, so I will say that there have been many international studies about the specific violence that women journalists experience. They are attacked first and foremost for their work, but the abuse is worse because they are women.
One such study was published in 2022. Entitled ‘The Chilling: A global study of online violence against women journalists’, it documents the abuse experienced by journalists like Maria Ressa and Carole Cadwalladr. It also states that one of “the worst examples of online violence [it] recorded […] is the harassment of assassinated Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia”.
And of course we know all about that.
In 2017, Daphne wrote this: “My ability to make grown men hysterical never ceases to astonish me, because believe me, I don’t try”.
And I love that. I love it, because it’s so true. And I can totally relate to it in my own life, my own work.
Daphne started out in journalism in her twenties, becoming Malta’s first named and first woman columnist. With time she developed into an investigative journalist, and of course the rest is, well, not history, but present.
Because even in death Daphne’s work is bringing people to justice, to face criminal charges, to fear facing justice. Even now, she is making grown men hysterical without trying.
She wrote that line – the one about her ability to make them hysterical – when I was seventeen. It feels even more relatable now, just as I’m sure it does to all women who are dismissed as “too emotional” for refusing to shut up when men (or other women) are behaving badly.
It has to be said: men who resort to dismissing you as “emotional” do so because, despite their show of bravado, they are too weak to look you in the eye and argue with you on an equal level, on the subject at hand, like a man.
These are the kind of men my aunt was writing about with that line, who continue to try to destroy her memory even now.
It’s also these kind of men who sometimes don’t quite know how to handle me. I love big earrings, lipstick, and calling out the bad guys.
In research, like journalism, we deal with the facts.
The facts are these:
- My aunt Daphne was an investigative journalist who exposed some of the biggest political scandals in Malta’s history
- A public inquiry found the
State responsible for creating the environment in which it was possible for her to be murdered - We should never be afraid to do what’s right, even when – and especially when – it means breaking the rules, their rules.