“The acts against information are subversive”. Enough with the attacks on journalists –

Attacks and intimidations against free information are “subversive acts”. The President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, chooses the traditional Fan ceremony, receiving the parliamentary press at the Quirinale before the summer break, to put a full stop to the controversies of the last few days, following the attack suffered by a journalist of La Stampa by some CasaPound militants in Turin. In a long, wide-ranging speech – in which he recalls, among other things, the support for Ukraine, ‘scolds’ the Parliament that fails to elect a judge of the Consulta and makes fun of the bill that would like to prohibit the use of feminine nouns for institutional positions – the head of State focuses in particular on the role of journalists and the importance of freedom of the press.

In the aftermath of the controversy over the words of the President of the Senate, Ignazio La Russa, who had condemned the attack in Turin but stigmatized the fact that the reporter had not identified himself as such, the head of state emphasized: “In recent times, protests, intimidations, if not attacks, against journalists, who find themselves documenting facts, have been increasing. But information is exactly this, as in Turin in recent days: documentation of what exists, without the obligation to discount. Light shed on facts that had been overlooked until then”. Mattarella shows his gratitude for the role played by the press: “The most intense thanks – he explains – concerns the precious and sometimes not easy task of following and interpreting the world of institutions and politics, giving news to citizens, expressing opinions, suggestions, criticisms that – it should never be forgotten – are essential in democratic life”. Everything is linked to the fundamental rights of citizens, he emphasizes: “Freedom of opinion is accompanied by freedom of information, that is, of criticism, of illustration of facts and reality. In a democracy, there is also the right to be informed, in a correct manner”. And the pluralism of information “is a guarantee of democracy”. Mattarella then recalls the technological evolution that also deeply affects the world of publishing, hoping that principles and rules also apply to digital platforms, “which have become the main responsible for the dissemination of information content”, and a reform of the law on publishing that takes into account the technological changes underway.

Video on this topic

Looking at the difficult international context, the president says he feels “great sadness” in “seeing that the world is throwing huge financial resources into armaments, which should be, much more appropriately, used for social value purposes. But who is responsible? Those who defend their own freedom – and those who help defend it – or those who attack the freedom of others?”, he says in reference to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. A war in which Italy must be clear about which side it is on: “Italy is committed, with conviction, to supporting Ukraine”. And not only Italy: broadening his gaze, Mattarella underlines that “the Russian Federation has given NATO an unpredictable boost in its role and protagonism”. Also because acting, and not remaining passive, is more necessary than ever, he underlines, recalling the precedent of Hitler’s Germany, which was given the “green light” to invade part of Czechoslovakia; but the “Second World War would not have broken out without that surrender”. But it went differently and never as in this case “historia magistra vitae”, he concludes. The head of state then considers it “duty” to condemn the “spread of a sub-culture that is inspired by hatred. A violence that from verbal frequently becomes physical. In recent days the attempted serious attack on Trump; in May the one, with more serious consequences, on the Slovakian prime minister, Fico; in the same month the one on the former mayor of Berlin, Giffey, which followed other attacks against political exponents in Germany, sometimes with fatal consequences”. Here he allows himself a moment of irony: “I hope that we can still say sindaca”, in reference to the bill by the Lega Nord’s Manfredi Potenti to prohibit the use of feminine nouns for institutional positions. Finally, two ‘slaps’ to politics: the first for “the long wait of the Constitutional Court for its fifteenth judge. This is a violation of the Constitution committed by Parliament”, on this “invitation, with courtesy but with determination, to elect this judge immediately”. And the second reminder, on prisons: “I don’t need to spend great words of principle, it is enough to remember the dozens of suicides, in little more than six months, this year”, and the conditions in which they find themselves, “distressing in the eyes of anyone with sensitivity and conscience. Indecent for a civilized country, which is – and must be – Italy”.