Freedom of expression and freedom of the media

According to participants in this session, some of the top challenges that Italy faced in terms of freedom of expression and media freedoms included the conflicts of interest between media owners and the political sphere, impunity for attacks against journalists, and the lack of legislative reforms. Participants agreed that what was most at stake nowadays was the preservation of quality journalism, in a context of increasing threats to journalists and a changing economic and technological environment.

One CSO described its work of closely monitoring threats, intimidation, seizures and other types of abuses faced by journalists, having recorded more than 4000 cases of threats against journalists since 2016. The journalists who are particularly concerned by these acts are investigative journalists or more generally journalists reporting on sensitive developments concerning politicians, the mafia, or speculative projects. Several journalists currently have to live with permanent police protection because of threats they have received from the mafia or extremist political groups.

Participants described how the journalism industry was evolving in a direction that was affecting quality journalism. They explained how, in a context of harsh competition for the production of fast news between traditional media and online platforms, hundreds of journalists from previous generations had been encouraged to retire and were increasingly replaced by freelance journalists. Such a generation of freelance journalists do not benefit from all the legal, economic and social support needed to produce quality work. They tend to avoid difficult issues and to focus on the ones that remunerate their work, as they know that their weak status will not offer them the appropriate backing in case of a slander trial. It was also mentioned that local news publishers were particularly sensitive to political and economic pressure and tended to be particularly cautious about avoiding any focus on sensitive issues. A participant also pointed out that the last collective bargaining agreement concerning journalists was around ten years old, which meant that journalists’ revenue had been decreasing.

The competition imposed by online platforms was seen as particularly harsh, especially because they benefit from a high level of self-regulation while traditional media do not. The question of outsourcing the policing of problematic content to private companies was also presented as a challenge. Concerning the question of the economic concentration of the media, a participant indicated that regulation existed to prevent a company possessing more that 20% of national newspapers. It was, however, noted that restructuring processes had still led to some media concentration within the limits of this regulation. A participant pointed out that the UN had been calling for a revision of the law on defamation for more than ten years, but that discussions on such a reform had not yet led to a concrete legislative change. This participant indicated that official court statistics showed that the great majority of defamation cases were unfounded and were therefore dismissed by judges. However, before reaching this stage, journalists would have lost much time and money in their defence, leading to what was described as a “tax on truth” infringing on media freedom. Another participant mentioned that there was a law on hate speech but that this was not properly enforced. The Italian authorities indicated that they were working with the Council of Europe platform on the protection of journalists and specialised Italian CSOs to address threats against journalists. They indicated that the Inter-Ministerial Committee on Human Rights (Comitato Interministeriale per i Diritti Umani, CIDU) followed up with the Ministry of Justice after any act of violence against a journalist to ensure that investigations took place. The Ministry of Interior also has a “Coordination Centre for Monitoring, Analysis and permanent exchange of information on the phenomenon of intimidation of journalists”. The Italian authorities indicated that the Italian Communications Authority (Autorità per le Garanzie nelle Comunicazioni, AGCOM) and the relevant parliamentary committee chaired by the opposition were in charge of guaranteeing the independence of the media and of providing guidance on pluralism.