Ideoteca

Pubblico un breve saggio (in lingua inglese) che ho scritto qualche settimana fa, a proposito della pressione della politica sui media in Italia, che oggi è tornata ad essere altissima, dopo la vincita di Berlusconi alle elezioni politiche. Siamo davvero così lontani dal mondo dipinto da Orwell in 1984? Forse no.

The issues raised in “Nineteen Eighty-Four” (by George Orwell) could obviously be considered up-to-date. The press and the media in general, if we consider our “democratic” country, are not completely independent. Italy, today, is known as the country of pizza, mafia and Berlusconi. Let’s try to have a look on this situation and find out the reason why.

Dealing with the updated chart of Global Press Freedom Rankings (made out in the 2006 by an organization called Freedom House) our own country is in the 79^th place after Bolivia, Mongolia, and Botswana. It is considered partly free, not completely free, for what concerns the freedom of press, TV and media in general. Why has this happened? Aren’t we free at all? Isn’t there a democracy? Yes, there is, but in our country there is too much pressure on media caused by politics and politicians in general.

In Italy, there is a paradox that can’t be found in any other country of the civil world (apart from the totalitarian ones): the prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is the owner of three televisions, of the most important publishing houses (such as Mondadori, that is now property of Berlusconi because of the corruption of some judges, carried out by Cesare Previti). Berlusconi (here also known as “the knight”) is the owner of some newspapers and, with his party, this single man controls the public broadcasting service (RAI). Is this a completely free democracy? Not at all.

In 2001, after winning the general elections, he banished from public TV – as he promised when he was on a trip in Bulgaria – some satirists men (for example Daniele Luttazzi or Sabina Guzzanti) and thrown out of the telescreen other important journalists (Enzo Biagi, Michele Santoro and Marco Travaglio were the well-known banned ones). He did this because in his opinion “they used the public service in a criminal way” – just because they let people know who their prime minister was.

Marco Travaglio wrote a book called “L’odore dei Soldi” (published in 2001) in which he explained where Berlusconi’s money came from, his personal contacts with men near “Cosa Nostra” and his numerous trials. This was the great excuse to ban him even if, since that moment, Travaglio has always won all the legal trials Berlusconi has conduct against him. It seems to be a joke or a huge lie but unfortunately it is not. It’s unbelievable.

Therefore, in 2003, Italy became a “partly-free” country. There were no more satirical programs on TV apart from those that mirrored the political ideas of Berlusconi’s Party. All the press was controlled. As we can see in a beautiful, interesting and shocking documentary by Sabina Guzzanti – Viva Zapatero – journalists couldn’t write whatever they wanted to and all the news were drained before being published. Some free journalists kept on writing on little newspapers as L’Unità or Il Manifesto, but they had not lots of readers.

Beppe Grillo, for instance, was another comedian banned from the screen (in the 90s). He always told the truth and this was not suitable for our country. For example, lots of people learnt that they were going to lose all their money (because of the Parmalat crack) during Grillo’s shows, years before this scandal was raised. This sounds a little bit ridiculous and it happened because our information, our press, our newscasts were controlled by politicians and they were not able to tell the truth.

In the United Kingdom, or in other free countries like France or Spain, this situation is considered completely absurd. Our prime minister is also the controller of the information system and this means that our press could not be completely free, since the politics goes over it. During the two decades of fascism, there was something called “censorship” and it was easier for people to understand that the cultural system was actually controlled by the State. Nowadays, in Italy, there is no more censorship so that everybody thinks they’re free, while they are not. The Italian public television (RAI) should be guided by Italians, by clever journalists and not by parties.

Tony Blair, talking about the BBC, said: “Well, sometimes I don’t like BBC, but it’s not my own television, it’s my citizens’ TV so I can’t do anything to change it”. This should be the right attitude of an upright prime minister. But we cannot expect such a big thing. At least, not here!

In Italy, if someone wants to see an independent program, should switch on his cable-TV (Sky). We have also the so-called “Digitale Terrestre” but, thanks to an act of Paliament during Berlusconi’s government (legge Gasparri), there aren’t any independent programs on it: there are only RAI, Mediaset and La7. Even the European Union considers this law unconstitutional.

Furthermore there is a man, called Vladimir Putin, one of the best (political) friends of Silvio Berlusconi, that, rather than banning awkward journalists, he kills them. In the last 10 years, 200 of journalists, that said something bad about Putin and his government, died because of fatal incidents. Their killers were not found. Someone said that we’re still governed by a totalitarian politics and we haven’t reached the freedom to express our ideas through press and TV.

However, there is an important way that helps us telling the truth: Internet. There are thousands of people that write on their own blogs, informing the others about what is happening here and there. With some websites, such as YouTube, Google or Current TV, you can upload your own documentary, film or video and billions of surfers will see it; you can become a journalist, a reporter and, if you are not free, there you can try to reach your own freedom too.

Matteo Fallica