Is Berlusconi Gagging Italy's Press?
In Italy, journalists are protesting a new bill limiting the use of wiretaps, claiming it is a Berlusconi-backed push to muffle independent media.
On Sunday, June 11th, Italy’s national daily, La Repubblica, printed a frontpage article featuring una pagina bianca (a white page) in protest of the government’s passage of a new bill to limit the extensive use of wiretaps. The sole phrase featured on the otherwise blank page read: La legge-bavaglio nega ai cittadini il diritto di essere informati (gag-law denies citizens the right to be informed).
Italy’s Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi, is challenging the country’s longstanding reliance on wiretaps to combat crime in virtually all areas of society, ranging from the government to banks, the Church, terrorism, and the mafia. In defense of the bill, Berlusconi asserted that, “In Italy, we are all spied upon.”
While many Italians support the legislation, believing that the government is finally addressing the problematic, unregulated use of wiretaps and abuse of individual privacy, opponents claim that this is merely an attempt to limit the exposure of scandal and corruption in the government. According to many opponents, the bill was solely inspired by the Prime Minister’s personal outrage at his private, sexual exploits being exposed in 2008 newspaper articles, which published a transcript of Berlusconi’s conversation discussing the scandalous affairs.
On July 8th, in response to the Senate’s vote to pass the bill, Italians united in protest across the country. Many protestors wore Italian flags tied around their mouths to demonstrate their belief that the legislation is not only an attempt to limit il flusso libero delle informazioni (the free flow of information), but also a blatant attempt to restrict freedom of speech.
Police forces throughout the country and Italian magistrates have also united in opposition to the contentious bill. They fear that such a restrictive legislative measure will hinder their ability to combat crime. Italy’s powerful ANM (Associazione Nationale Magistrati: National Magistrate Association), announced that it is “our duty to denounce [the wiretap bill] approved by the Senate,” claiming that it “will [now] be much harder for police and prosecutors to fight crime, while the courts are overwhelmed by red tape that make it impossible to objectively operate the system.”
Despite fierce opposition from Italian police, magistrates, and other state officials, no one is more outraged than the Italian press, who claim that a limitation on their current ability to spontaneously publish transcripts of wiretapped recordings is a manipulative tactic by the government to muffle an independent media.
At 7 AM on Friday, July 9th, one day after the wiretap legislation passed in the Senate, the Italian media officially went on strike, which has continued to halt any and all news updates around the country.
According to an Italian source and Berlusconi supporter, “they finally went too far. They had unrestrained access and they abused it. It is the government’s job not only to ensure that there is a free, informative media, but that peoples’ right [to privacy] is protected. The law does not make wiretaps illegal, it simply places some much needed limitations on a runaway system.”
Ludovica, a friend and Italian university student, does not agree. Ludovica claims that it is not the press or the police who have ‘gone too far,’ but Berlusconi. “He has finally done it. First he tries to control the media by owning it. Then, even when he doesn’t get his way, he just uses the law to silence it.”
The contentious legislation has forced Italy into an ongoing national debate in which supposed defenders of free speech are at odds with supposed defenders of individuals’ right to privacy.