Puglia. Biased and confused. Insults at the woman political reporter

Roberta Lanzolla replies to the politicians of Santeramo in Colle (Bari) and to social media users: I made an accurate reporting  of the facts

OSSIGENO July 29^th  2022 -. Between January and June 2022  Roberta Lanzolla, a journalist from Santeramo in Colle, a town within the metropolitan city of Bari, received insults and was accused of being “biased”, “confused”, “a distributor of fake news” and in the pay of those in power. The reporter had reported in the newspaper ‘l’Edicola del Sud’ some background to the electoral campaign for the municipal administrations of the city , examining the negotiations between the political parties that had to put forward candidates for mayor, using information from reliable sources and  analyzing the moves of all the parties and coalitions that were forming in view of the forthcoming vote.

Her analyses were not appreciated. Some members of the local Democratic Party attacked her on social media. They accused her of being confused, of not understanding Italian, of talking to unauthorized individuals and of feeding fake news instead of checking official sources. In June 2022, with the polls still open, a Facebook user who remained anonymous accused her of “fixing the exit polls” on ‘Santeramointrash’, a local satirical Facebook page, so that, with the election of a certain candidate for mayor, he wrote, “your job will be safe”. At her request for explanations, she was told “not to play dumb”.

THE JOURNALIST – “For the newspaper the’ Edicola del Sud’ I examined step by step the negotiations of the parties in view of the 2022 municipal election in our city – said Roberta Lanzolla to Ossigeno -. I had reliable sources and I fine-combed all the parties of any prospective coalition. This must have unnerved the political secretariats, in particular that of the Democratic Party. I was accused of being confused, of peddling fake news, of being on someone’s payroll. They could have called me on the phone to ask for a possible rectification, in case I was wrong. Instead, with impolite and very arrogant comments on Facebook they tried to denigrate the work I had  conducted in a serious and meticulous way. In my articles I have not denigrated anyone, nor made any dubious references  of any kind; I simply reported on the complicated and delicate negotiations of all the coalitions. It was not appreciated that certain strategies were dissected, because some people are used to communicating only with pre-packaged press notes, which must not be contradicted. Being even indicated, falsely,  as the inspiration for a local satirical page in order to look for favours and work, was just too much “.

SOLIDARITY – Ossigeno expresses its solidarity with Roberta Lanzolla, who in 2016 was already the victim of attacks by the ‘Noi con Salvini’ Movement of Santeramo in Colle following which she was publicly supported by the Order of Journalists, by  the Assostampa of Puglia and by the President of the Region Michele Emiliano (read here and here). LT wt