Italian government criticised for intimidation of critical journalists

Right-wing media seen as close the Italian government have accused some Italian journalists of having “provoked” the EU’s tough stance on press freedom restrictions in the country, Alessandra Costante, general secretary of the Italian journalists’ union, the Italian National Press Federation (FNSI), told Euractiv.

Costante commented on the letter sent by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to the EU Commission, challenging the criticism of press freedom in the Rule of Law report published on 24 July.

Some newspapers considered close to the government released the names of journalists who had contributed to the EU-funded Media Freedom Rapid Response (MFRR) report quoted in the rule of law report.

“The press campaign orchestrated against some journalists accused of provoking’ the EU’s tough stance on the restriction of press freedom in Italy is scandalous”, declared the FNSI secretary.

For the FNSI secretary, “publishing names means drawing targets on colleagues. We will know whose responsibility it is if anything happens to them”.

According to Costante, such a campaign, “in addition to being scandalous, underlines, as if it were needed, how journalists who are not aligned with the government’s policy are pointed out to the public as enemies: a clear intimidation action and contrary to press freedom”.

The FNSI contributed together with other stakeholders to the report.

Meloni’s attack

In her letter to the Commission, Meloni described the journalists who contributed to the report as “professionals of disinformation and mystification”.

In addition to the letter sent to the Commission, Meloni also made some statements on the issue at a press point on the sidelines of her visit to China.

According to her, the letter she sent does not represent “a moment of friction with the European Commission”, but “a common reflection on the instrumentalisation that has been made of a technical document in which I am obliged to remind you that the critical accents are not those of the European Commission”.

Meloni stressed that the criticism in the report did not come directly from the Commission but from the “stakeholders” and directly quoted some of the newspapers she considered most critical such as Il Domani, il Fatto Quotidiano or Repubblica.

Media under attack

The report made special mention of the independence of public media, highlighting the crucial role played by RAI, the main public service broadcaster, in the media landscape.

The Commission recalled that “stakeholders stress the need for a comprehensive reform to ensure that RAI is better protected from the risks of political interference”.

Other concerns expressed by the stakeholders mentioned by the Commission concerned par condicio and the government’s “decision, adopted with the Budget Law for 2024, to reduce RAI’s licence fee and to compensate for this reduction with additional direct funding of €430 million”.

The situation of press freedom in Italy was also criticised in the MFRR report.

The report states that “since the far-right coalition led by Giorgia Meloni took office in October 2022, press freedom has been under increasing pressure, with unprecedented attacks and violations often initiated by politicians in an attempt to marginalise and silence critical voices”.

The MFRR report also confirms an alarming situation: from October 2022 to June 2024, there were 193 incidents against journalists, compared to 75 in the previous 22 months. Of these, 54 were directed by political figures.

[Edited by Alice Taylor, Zoran Radosavljevic]

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