24 Aug 09 | Index Index, Middle East and North Africa, minipost
Following user protests, Facebook has decided to shut down gaming application “Bounce The Illegal Immigrant Back”. The game was posted by Renzo Bossi, the son of Umberto Bossi, party leader of the Northern League and part of Berlusconi’s fourth cabinet. The game sees players pushing back the “boats of hope” and kicking the immigrants back into the sea. Last week there were reports of the deaths of several Africans whose ship ran out of fuel whilst migrating from Libya to Italy. Read more here
20 Aug 09 | Index Index, minipost
In the northern town of Varallo Sesia in Italy, women wearing the “burkini”, a garment made up of a veil, a tunic and loose leggings, face a fine of €500 if they are spotted at swimming pools or rivers. The mayor of the northern Piedmont town said: “The sight of a ‘masked woman’ could disturb small children, not to mention problems of hygiene.” Read more here
14 Aug 09 | Uncategorized
This is a guest post by Giulio D’Eramo
Italy’s state-owned broadcaster RAI withdrew its five RAISat channels from News Corp’s Sky Italia satellite platform this month. The news came just a week after the official launch of a new RAI-Mediaset cable platform (TivuSat) to see off competition from Sky. Mediaset is part of Silvio Berlusconi’s media empire.
The General Confederation of Labour, the largest trade union in Italy, has commented that it is “bizarre that RAI is rejecting the economic certainty of a contract with Sky, especially in view of the reduced advertising income due to the economic downturn”. The National Federation of the Press stated: “We cannot avoid observing that the whole negotiation was marred by consistent and regular interventions by the government, and that the final outcome is the most favourable to the prime minister’s company. It is up to RAI’s executives to prove that the decision was not driven by Berlusconi’s personal interests”.
With many media analysts and politicians raising the same concerns, on 10 August the RAI General Director Masi — who was nowhere to be found in the days following the withdrawal — claimed that the use of all RAI channels would have been a driving force for the Sky platform and that RAI would have been exposed to a potential multi-million loss in revenue once the RAI-Mediaset platform began working at full capacity.
In Italy, anyone who owns a television has to pay a licence fee, as in the UK. It costs around 110 euros per year. In my own home in Rome, I don’t receive the analogue air-signal, so I became a Sky client years ago. Now I am in the peculiar situation of being obliged to pay 110 euros per year to RAI, while not enjoying any of the services. I am in fact being forced to switch from Sky to the RAI-Mediaset cable platform.
The whole situation was best summarised by Corriere della Sera’s media analyst A Grasso: “With the switchover to digital and pay-TV, the battle is not between Mediaset and RAI, but between Mediaset and Sky. And RAI seems to have decided to side with Mediaset.” However, it is RAI (ie the Italian taxpayer) and not Mediaset (ie the prime minister) that is set to bear the costs of this media war. Giuseppe Giulietti, spokesman for the freedom of speech organisation Articolo21 says “the creation of a RAI-Mediaset TV monopoly is now a reality. It may well be a coincidence, but the plans of the P2 (the infamous Masonic lodge that numbered Berlusconi and leading establishment figures amongst its members) included the creation of a monopolistic agency for information and the progressive dismantling of state TV.
Berlusconi now seems to be extending his control of Italian television. On 6 August, RAI named its new directors. Among the nominees, there is one who stands out as controversial and possibly not legitimate: the former director of Padania, the daily of Berlusconi’s allied party Lega Nord, is due to step in as vice-director of RAI1. However, RAI1 can only appoint an outside director if it is unable to find a suitable candidate within the organisation.
The main TV channels did not report the revelations about Berlusconi’s controversial sexual habits in detail, but chiefly broadcast comments from leading politicians. Only RAI3 (by far the smallest of RAI channels, especially in terms of budget) dared to take the risk of disturbing the PM’s holidays by reporting some of the taped conversations.
Berlusconi made his annoyance known on 7 August: “We no longer want nor can accept that our state TV is the only one in the world to criticise [its] government.”
The Union of RAI Journalists (USIGRAI) immediately replied: “We also think that we no longer want nor can accept that our state TV, paid for by each and every Italian family, is the only TV in the world to support the personal economical/political interests of our PM Silvio Berlusconi.”
The leader of Italy of Values (IdV) centrist party and former Milan prosecutor A Di Pietro added: “Only in the worst dictatorship does one expect the media to exercise self-censorship, and Berlusconi’s latest comments show us that this is the way we’re headed. The government has shifted from isolating single journalists to the exercise of systematic psychological violence, which is known to be only one small step away from physical violence.”
30 Jun 09 | Uncategorized
On 13 June, a draft law limiting journalists’ ability to provide the public with vital information was passed in the lower house of the Italian parliament and now awaits the senate’s approval. Unions representing lawyers, journalists and editors have all expressed their firm opposition, organising a series of events, including a conference last week and another planned for tomorrow in Rome, and promoting a petition to stop the law, which has 260,000 signatories –– and counting.
In recent years, the Italian press has published transcripts of private conversations obtained through wiretapping. Some of these transcripts were relevant to ongoing trials; others were not. Both exposed left and right-wing politicians alike to public anger and sometimes embarrassment. To gain popular support, the government is arguing that the exceptionally high number of tapped phone lines (estimated to be around 300,000) justifies their plan to fast-track the law through parliament. Two years ago, the Prodi government unsuccessfully tried to pass a similar law.
Among the restrictions outlined in the draft is a provision making it illegal for journalists and editors to publish information about a trial (on wiretaps or anything else) until the preliminary investigations are over, even if these documents are already in the public domain. Punishment can be up to 30 days in jail, plus a €10, 000 fine for journalists and €465,000 fine for editors. “This implies censorship of news that could be very relevant to most citizens. For example, under the new law, the press would not have been able to report on the Parmalat scandal for many years,” said Franco Siddi, general secretary of the Italian Press Federation (FNSI). Similar concerns were expressed by both the European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) and the International Press Institute (IPI).
In addition, the new law will make it illegal to publish extracts from wiretaps not relevant to trials. For journalists, this could lead to the maximum sentence of three years in prison.
Under the new law, prosecutors will only be allowed to wiretap individuals for a maximum of 30 days. They can do so only if they have strong criminal evidence, and only when the maximum punishment for the alleged crime exceeds five years in prison. These evidence requirements are less strict when the alleged crime involves organised crime or terrorism. “Theoretically we can still perform investigations on criminal organisations such as the Mafia, but the five-year limit implies that we will not be allowed to wire-tap for typical Mafia crimes such as extortion,” said Giuseppe Cascini, secretary of the supreme court.
“It is a serious blow to everybody’s security and a great help for a lot of criminals,” said Giancarlo Caselli, head prosecutor in Turin. “If this law was already effective the arrests made [of activists allegedly trying to rebuild the Red Brigades] would not have been carried out,” said Olga D’antona, MP and widow of Massimo d’Antona, killed in the 1990s by the new Red Brigades.
