Il Fatto Quotidiano on line
Il Fatto defends freedom of information and freedom of the press by widespread advertising of its campaign to scupper the new “gagging” law as soon as it is passed by creating widespread support through social networking. Journalists will risk prison sentences if they publish transcripts of (legally obtained) wiretapped phonecalls contained in trial documents. Editors will be heavily fined. Going online is the first step in their defence. Watch this space!
Opposition Party IDV (Italia dei Valore – lit. Italy of Values) is getting ready to defend freedom of speech in Italy by providing space for the publication of legal and publicly available wiretapped conversions which may no longer published in Italy once the Gag-a Bill becomes law.The “forbidden” conversations will be made available by lawyers.
Furthermore, IDV MPs and senators will read exerpts of public interest (without violating anyone’s privacy) in Parliament. This means that they will have to be included in the transcription of parliamentary debates,. and can thus be published. They will be immediately reported on the IDV website, thus offering an information service which is fundamental and sanctioned by the constitution. The help of bloggers everywhere, the free-thinkers of the web, will be enlisted to publicize this campaign of civil disobedience. IDV Belgium.
We are all going gag-a with the new anti-wire-tapping law. But has anyone actually read what the Bill says? Has anyone tranbslated the text into English?
Take a look at the series of initiatives in protest against the proposed anti-wiretap bill by the right-wing government which will prevent Italian journalists and bloggers from publishing the content of intercepted telephone conversations even when they have been legally obtained and are no longer protected by judicial secrecy. The law, if passed, will make investigators’ work extremely difficult and serious investigative journalism practically impossible.
The iniziative promoted by Italia dei Valori includes the use of this banner which says “ARREST ALL OF US” I am prepared to publish the English translation of excerpts of legally obtained and publicly available wiretapped conversations on this blog. ARRESTATE ME TOO!!
Silvio Berlusconi and his gang are planning to introduce a new law which will significantly limit investigators’ powers to wiretap conversations and use them in bringing criminals to trial The proposed law will also try to get journalists who publish wiretapped conversations into prison. Journalists and criminal investigators, not to mention the general public, are not unreasonably worried about this development. The new law would exclude mafia association and other forms of organised crime but would let sex offenders, fraudsters, smugglers, forgerers, moneylauderers and many others slip through the net.
Former Minister of “Justice”, Clemente Mastella (the one whose lack of support for Prodi’s government lead to Berluscone IV) has reportedly said (l’Unità 11 June 2008) “I think that investigators who rely solely on wiretaps are rather lazy and inefficient”.
Presumably all they have to do is go back to traditional investigative methods – perhaps the good old magnifying glass. – or, as hercule Poirot would have it, “the little grey cells”. A bit like saying that doctors should forget laser surgery and go back to the saw!
Journalist Marco Travaglio now relates some of the wierd facts of Italian poltiical life on Beppe Grillo’s blog, live every Monday. What a relief to get away from the strangehold of the RAISET duopoly and the dazing stupidity of its infotainment programmes and get some straight facts. accurate information. A perfect example of freeing information through the Web.
Italian journalist Marco Travaglio is in the firing line after this weekend’s program “Che tempo che fa” hosted by Fabio Fazio. Travaglio illustrated how the political climate of the moment dictates what so-called journalists should or shouldn’t be writing.
“It’s obvious”, he says “that if the political climate is conducive to a non-conflictual relationship between the opposition and the new government majority - Schifano has had friendships with members of the mafia - I don’t write that Schifani has had friendships with members of the mafia because neither the right-wing nor the left-wing want me to – and what have I got to do with right and left? They can take any political stance they want to but I have to do my job as a journalist - I have to write about it. Lirio Abbate has written about this in his book with Gomez and he is rightly lauded as a heroic journalist who is threatened by the Mafia. So they should either have the courage to say that Lirio Abbate is a villain and a liar or they must have the courage to take note of what he says about the second most important institutional role and ask this person to explain his relationship with those gentlemen who have been sentenced for Mafia crimes”
Although Travaglio didn’t actually say during the programme was that Schifani, president of the Italian Senate, has friends among the Mafia, but merely quoted from Abbate and Gomez’s book ”I complici” (The accomplices), now both right and left are thirsting for his blood.
Perhaps what annoyed politician’s most was Travaglio’s comment about the kind of leader of the Senate which can be expected after Schifani – perhaps an earthworm or a form of mould, a comparison which Travaglio managed to rectify in time. Likening Schifani to an earthworm or mould would be an insult to lower organisms. Mould can at least be used to produce penicillin.
Most Italian politicians and many journalists haven’t got the foggiest idea about the real importance of Beppe Grillo’s V-Day. Instead of wasting time and energy being offended and insulting peoples’ intelligence by comparing Grillo to Mussolini, they should be taking a more serious look at ICT. Grillo is successful first of all because he is a brilliant comedian, secondly because he comes up with a lot of information (rather than bla-bla opinions) and thirdly because he uses webtools intelligently, something that hardly anyone in the media has bothered to mention.
Of course blogs, used by averagely intelligent people, are a serious threat to traditional media, (and therefore to traditional politics) and have the power to undermine the present RAI-Mediaset duopoly.
This petition is worth looking at and perhaps you might like to sign it!
16th November: Corriere della Sera
Yesterday evening (15 November n.d.r.), a long interview with the Prime Minister Romano Prodi was broadcast on satellite TgSky24, to the detriment of the Rai (“State”) TV and Mediaset, creating yet another opportunity for controversy.
The Government spokesperson explained that on Rai or Mediaset there are no programs which let an interviewed guest take more than two minutes to state his reasons and opinions without being interrupted.
This is the opposite attitude from that of the previous Berlusconi Government which was often present with its Ministers, party leaders, members of Majority, etc, on Rai and Mediaset programs.
It’s obvious that the Government does not actually like current political programs on Rai, nor their presenters. This opens up a new kind of controversy about the public service of RAI television.
Contribution by Massimo Brachi
Just to refresh your memory about how censure works in Italy, take another look at the Corriere della Sera article of 19 February last entitled POLITICS and TV – a strange PAR CONDICIO by GIOVANNI SARTORI (pending permission to publish)
Sartori writes. “Basically, I have never been really persuaded that the par condicio a good thing for TV. Not because it is antidemocratic (this is the theory of His TVship (Sua Emittenza, a play on words of Sua Eminenza “HIs Eminince”, quite untranslatable n.d.t.), but because I don't really think that it really provides a balanced vision of politics. We have know since Aristotle that there are two types of equality (or parity): arithmetical equality (everyone gets the same amount, for example shoes of the same size,), or proportional equality (equal things to equals, unequal things to unequals); for example higher taxes for the rich, lower taxes for the less wealthy. I believe that the TV should apply the latter.
And this is why the principle «equal talk time for all» is counterproductive, encourages exhibitionism on TV and the proliferation of mini-parties. Which is the last thing we need.
So why have I defended par condicio in the past? Not because I like it but through force of circumstance. We are probably the only democracy in the world in which almost all private TV stations are monopolised by a sole owner. When the left wing was in power, they didn't have the will to break this monopoly (though they would have had the votes). All they managed to come up with, to counteract the force of the monopoly before elections, was the par condicio. Then Berlusconi won the 2001 elections and so the situation became even more ghastly. The colonisation and control by Berlusconi of State TV was added to the monopolistic control of Mediaset . Which allowed “His TVship” not only to turn par condicio into a farce (too weak a barrier to hold out against his unscrupulousness), but to transform it, thanks to his praetorians in the Rai, into a generalised silencer, a gag on anyone at all who opposed him and was not at his behest.
I will quote, as an example, a case which concerns me directly and which I can chronicle without fear of contradiction. Last Sunday I took part in the Fabio Fazio's programme on Rai 3. I was told that the programme was watched by 5 million viewers, and perhaps this is what made the Palazzo (Chigi ndt) so nervous. As it was, a certain Prof. Petroni, who represents Forza Italia on the RAI Board of Directors, got upset with Fazio and with me too, judging my presence to be an extremely serious violation of par condicio. What would this violation consist of, pray? This: that I had been invited “without the opposite party” to talk about a “recent book of mine which notoriously deals with in a particularly critical and partial manner the reform of the Constitution ».
After which, the above-mentioned Prof. Petroni underlines, in a second letter on the 14 February to the Director General of the RAI, the «highly political-electoral content» of this book.
The incontrovertible fact remains that in the programme in question, the content of my book was not discussed, or at least, only very brief reference was made to it. So the accusation against Fazio had no foundation; the misdemeanour had not been committed. Now Prof. Petroni denies (so I read in the Corriere on Friday February 17th) having asked for an «action» to be taken against me. Clearly this would have been impossible for the dreadful misdeed of the 12 February: thank God I do not work for the RAI.
But it is equally clear that, in future, such action will be possible. The scandal of Petroni's argumentation is that the par condicio does not only apply to what one says on TV, but also to what a scholar writes in a book (see the second letter cited above). I will not bother to repeat that my last essay in that book, in «Mala Costituzione», dates back to the 22 October 2005, or that my criticism of our various plans to reform the constitution also date back to 1995, and therefore that no part of my text was written with the present elections in mind. The scandalous point is with the pretext of par condicio, censure, the silencer, is extended to books and therefore to intellectual activity as a whole.
Prof. Petroni should not take me for an idiot. I can read between the lines, and what I read is that by using my case, he is warning the Rai that I should no longer appear (I imagine for ever, should Berlusconi win again) on TV. If the intimidation and the ostracism were directed against me alone, it wouldn't be so bad. But it is obvious that the message is for all academics (as long as they are not on the «right side»).
To put it in a nutshell, don Rodrigo (the baddie in “Promessi Sposi n.d.t.) and his «bravoes» (henchmen n.d.t.) want an election without any possible ascertainment of the truth, without any scrutiny by experts. As a «bravo» Prof. Petroni is really «bravo»”
PS Professor Sartori is not a left-wing extremist but a member of the liberal establishment with an honoured academic career.
PPS Prof Petroni wears many hats and one of them is his membership of the Scientific Committee of “Società Libera” whose board of directors also includes Giovanni Sartori himself (and Fabio Roversi Monaco). I bet they have some interesting meetings.