The Italian government is to stall plans to ban intercept evidence from court cases. Giulio D’Eramo reports
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Media strikes over Silvio Berlusconi’s ‘gag law’ — Italian journalists fall silent to protest PM’s wiretap bill. Benedetta Brevini reports
It’s a first, an official day of media silence in Italy. Just a taste of what could become a permanent silence, if the prime minister’s “gag law” is not stopped in time. Italian newsstands are empty today because reporters and editors on all major newspapers began a 24-hour strike yesterday and radio, TV and internet journalists are due to join the protest today. The media are protesting against a law that will seriously compromise freedom of speech in Italy. Even in a polarised country like Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy, this strike is extraordinary, and not just for its scale. It represents the final act of months of campaigns, debates and appeals. Opposition to the legislation has united journalists, magistrates, policemen, publishers and civil society organisations for the first time.
The measures, passed by the senate in June, will limit journalists’ freedom to investigate, but will also restrict magistrates’ criminal probes. The bill restricts police use of wiretaps in a move Berlusconi has cast as protecting citizen’s privacy. Critics point out it would also protect Italy’s scandal prone prime minister. The proposed curb on the use of wiretaps during investigations will limit the number of days police are allowed to intercept communications. Under the current system, 18-month warrants are the norm, but the new measures will allowing monitoring for only 75 days.
The new law would curb the use of wiretaps during investigations, under the current system, 18-month warrants are the norm, but the new measures will limit the number of days’ worth of communication interceptions to 75 days. All these measures have been heavily criticised by the police and legal authorities. Wiretaps have traditionally played a crucial role in Italian criminal investigations and have led to the arrest of high profile mafia bosses. On a visit to Rome in June, the US Assistant Attorney General Lanny Breuer expressed concerns over the bill. He explained that “from a prosecutor’s point of view, you don’t want anything to occur that prevents the Italians from doing as good a job (in fighting organised crime) as they have in the past”.
The law will also undoubtedly curtail freedom of expression, a right that in Italy is protected by article 21 of the constitution. Journalists would risk jail and publishers could be fined up to €450,00 for reporting the contents of wiretaps before a defendant is sent to trial. Italy has one of the slowest justice systems in the world and this could mean that Italian citizens would only learn about cases of public interest after a four-or-five-year delay, if ever.
Fortunately, the mounting dissent has gone beyond Italian borders. Last month, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OCSE) representative on freedom of the media Dunja Mijatovic condemned the bill, explaining that “the draft law” “contradicts OSCE commitments, as it prohibits the use of some confidential sources and materials which may be necessary for meaningful investigative journalism”. Calls for intervention by the European Union have also not gone unheard. On 14 June, a group of members of the European Parliament, captained by Jean Marie Cavada, urged member states “to monitor and ensure full compliance with the principle of media independence by fully enforcing article 11 of the European Charter of Fundamental Rights” and “to prevent undue interference in the work of journalists and media”. This is a plea that obviously refers to the Italian situation. And, in June, the European commissioner Viviane Reding assured opponents that once the law is adopted, the EU “will closely review the text” of the law and “will check it against the principle of press and information freedom, always defended by the European Commission”. In spite of the intense opposition to the bill, the legislative process runs on unaffected and the discussion will resume in the Chamber of Deputies on 29 July.
Today’s strike is the media’s last ditch attempt to stop the measures and to raise awareness among Italian citizens. In a country where readership of newspapers is among the lowest of Europe and where television is directly or indirectly controlled by the prime minister, is not always easy to get the message through. Yet the daily newspaper La Repubblica expressed its hope that “the media blackout will speak to the public and the citizens will finally know that there is a problem they should be concerned with.” Let’s just hope that the media silence isn’t permanent.
Benedetta Brevini is a journalist and researcher in European media policy and politics at the University of Westminster, London. She has worked as a journalist in Milan, New York and London.
In Bangladesh a pro-opposition Bengali-language newspaper Amar Desh has been closed down, allegedly because of publishing irregularities. Reports suggest that more than 200 police stormed the paper’s offices. You don’t have to be a cynic to suspect that the content and stance of the newspaper might have been what is at issue here.
Meanwhile, in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi, who is Italy’s largest media owner, is backing a draft bill that could imprison or impose heavy fines on journalists who report public interest stories that involve wire taps before the final phase of prosecution. Given the length of many trials, this is a serious block on some kinds of reporting.
Curbing the powers of journalists to report information in the public interest either by direct or indirect means is a significant assault on free speech and on the values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Remove their power to criticise government policy or to expose some types of corruption, and journalists risk becoming organs of propaganda for the ruling party.
If Machiavelli were writing his guidelines for conscienceless princes today, then he would no doubt advocate scaring journalists into cowering submission, making them terrified to publish anything critical of the ruler. Luckily, however, journalism attracts some extraordinarily brave people Anna Politkovskaya, who relentlessly exposed corruption in Putin’s Russia, and was murdered for this, is just one humbling example.
One side effect of the Internet’s invention is that today what is suppressed in one place often reappears somewhere else. In fact the more forceful the attempt to clamp down on what is published, the more likely it is that the views being suppressed will be spread widely. Would-be censors take note. You may be sowing dragon’s teeth.
Silvio Berlusconi plans to jail journalists who distribute the contents of bugged conversations. Giulio D’Eramo reports
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