The US’s National Public Radio published on New Year’s Eve a link to important international stories from 2018 that readers and listeners may have missed in “the year’s relentless news cycle”.
Some stories are too important to just walk away from even when Donald Trump is putting into question the deepest mores of western liberal philosophy.
One of those important stories from around the world is headlined in the form of a question, asked by NPR last July, and still unanswered: “Who ordered the car bomb that killed Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia?”
It’s a question that still needs asking because without an answer we’ll never know the scale of the threat undermining our aspirations for our way of life.
It is not just a forensic question, though it is that.
It’s a question that must also be asked because we still live in a society where journalists are openly told to shut up when they publish stories that are inconvenient to powerful people.
It’s a question that must be asked because though no one has paid a higher price than Daphne Caruana Galizia and her family, her assassination remains a symptom of a deeper, darker malaise. That we live in a dysfunctional democracy and the chilling effect of the threat of elimination is around us even now.
It’s a question that must be asked because the further away we are from that horrific day in October of 2017, the further away we are from getting answers and from coming to terms at last with just how far from the dreams of our mothers we have come.