Sick mentality taken as a reality

  • 2009-05-28
I have been working for many years as a journalist in the biggest Estonian newspapers. During these years I have written hundreds of articles in Estonian and Russian languages. Besides working as a journalist on the radio and TV, I am an author of two books. However, during many years of my professional experience I have never been as unpleasantly shocked as I was when I read the letter to the editor in TBT (nr 655). The letter was written by Jeroen Bult, a Dutch person living in Estonia, and addressed to Anna-Maria Galojan.

At first I could hardly believe my eyes, how is it possible to blame a person in deeds or in some actions without having any facts. I wonder how TBT being such a serious newspaper, allows this kind of letter to be published, as all the dirty words that were addressed to Anna-Maria Galojan are not proven. It is obvious that the person who has written this letter showed his aggression and personal hatred towards Galojan by using her as a symbol of everything that is wrong with Estonia.
This subjective opinion-letter came up just after Anna-Maria Galojan gave an interview to TBT, which was recently published.

In fact Anna-Maria Galojan shared her viewpoints on the political and economic situation in Estonia, with Bult finding Galojan to be the real cause of the current crisis in Estonia. The point is that  Bult, without analyzing outside political and economic factors straight out attacks this young Estonian political scientist.

The most horrible thing is that he goes too far with expressing his personal opinion with dirty words instead of having polite discussions.
It seems that Bult does not know about European values and democratic norms for carrying out debates or maybe he simply does not want to use them for some particular reason.

It was quite surprising for me to read that Bult thinks that a well-known politician such as Anna-Maria Galojan would try to show-off in the media at any cost or to ask the media to write about her life. It is also surprising that a person working as a freelance journalist does not know that nowadays famous public faces such as Galojan do not need more attention than they have and do not need to ask any media to pay extra attention to them. It is always hard to be beautiful, clever and famous at the same time and there are always people who can envy you and show their negative attitude by writing dirty articles about you in newspapers.

Sometimes people think that when a woman is beautiful she cannot be a good expert in serious political and economic topics at the same time.
In fact the media is trying to make artificial scandals to make money.

As for me personally, being a professional journalist, I do not support any of the parties but I do not agree with Bult's claims that Edgar Savisaar (Central Party) and Villu Reiljan (People Party) did not deserve to be voted as leaders. We have to admit the fact that they were elected by the majority.  Bult wanted to point out some political scandals that involved these politicians, but he failed to mention the scandals were caused by the media itself. Let the court judge who is right or wrong not the media or Jeroen Bult himself.

Virkko Lepassalu
Journalist and writer, Tallinn


 

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