Italy. Journalist refuses criminal decree conviction of libel and opts to go on trial

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During the pandemic, Nazareno Dinoi criticized those who allegedly “jumped the queue” to get vaccinated against Covid before others.

OSSIGENO June 7^th  2025 – Journalist Nazareno Dinoi, editor of  ‘La Voce di Manduria’, and six of his fellow citizens, including a current and a former councillor of the Municipality of Manduria, both opposition politicians, were convicted of libel by a criminal decree issued by the preliminary investigations judge of the Court of Taranto. The fines varied from €1,200 to €1,800. Nazareno Dinoi and the other six Mandurians refused to accept the sentence, but have filed a countersuit and will now in a  trial have the opportunity to assert their rights. Nazareno Dinoi is being represented by the lawyer Lorenzo Bullo.

The proceedings began in 2021 with a defamation lawsuit filed by Gregorio Pizzi, political advisor and campaign manager for Mayor Gregorio Pecoraro, in relation to an article published during the height of the Covid vaccination period and the positive comments on the article  posted on social media.

BACKGROUND – The controversial  article that led to the judge’s decision dates back to the Covid vaccination period and had this headline: “Vaccinations: who is jumping the queue  in Manduria? The luckiest ones have found doses that otherwise would have been wasted.”  It reported that among those vaccinated early were Mayor Gregorio Pecoraro, the city council president with his wife, and other members of his staff. At the time, the mayor and his majority disapproved of the articles that labelled them “vaccine cheats” because they allegedly skipped the queue compared to those more eligible for the vaccine. They created a Facebook group called “Do you love Manduria? Stop following La Voce di Manduria,” which urged readers to boycott the online newspaper of which Nazareno Dinoi is editor-in-chief.(see here Ossigeno).

THE CONVICTION DECREE  (a rapid judicial procedure in Italy for minor offences) – According to the magistrate, this article contained “offensive content and denigrated the professionalism and integrity of the injured party, due to the following passage: “Gregorio Pizzi, 67, ‘expert advisor’ to the mayor of Manduria, personal assistant, and representative of the municipal administration at the vaccination centre in Via Sorani, was given the Pfizer vaccination despite not meeting the age requirement  established by the national commissioner for the pandemic emergency.” His “regular presence in the vaccination area was resented by the healthcare staff, who had already asked him to leave a couple of times. It was very apparent that  at certain times during the day, people accompanied by Pizzi entered the vaccination centre through secondary entrances. Other high-ranking municipal administrators, some with their wives in tow, would have passed through the same entrance.”

THE JOURNALIST – “This is my 37^th lawsuit . So far,” Nazareno Dinoi, editor of the newspaper ‘La Voce di Manduria’, told Ossigeno, “all have been dismissed or ended with my acquittal, except for a couple still pending and a conviction in a civil case for which I had to pay €3,000 in compensation against a €30,000 claim. I had to compensate a former central government prefect who administered the Municipality of Manduria, in the province of Taranto, following the dissolution of the municipal administration due to mafia infiltration. They all accused me of libel.”

“This time,” he added, “the complaint comes from a close associate of the incumbent mayor of the same municipality, who felt libelled  because during the pandemic, in April 2021, I wrote that he had shown up at the city vaccination centre to supervise the work in the name of an authority he didn’t deserve (he had no political office and wasn’t a health worker, he was simply an assistant to the mayor). He had been vaccinated, but he didn’t meet the age requirement at the time to receive a dose of the Pfizer vaccine , a dose that, he claimed would have been wasted,” the journalist recounts.

Gregorio Pizzi, the mayor’s right-hand man, had expressed his opinion in a letter to a local newspaper: “I wasn’t regulating any flow of patients , as the newspaper’s columnist mistakenly attributed to me, and at the end of my shift on April 9^th  when the health workers were supposed to leave, the doctor asked me if I was available to be vaccinated. I asked the doctor if it was worth waiting any longer, until some other recipient showed up. I was told the staff  had to leave and that they were throwing away the remaining dose. Only then, after yet another invitation from the doctor, did I agree to be vaccinated. I don’t know if that means I’m being crafty. The only blemish that can be attributed to me,” he added, “is my collaborative spirit in making myself available to everyone for the smooth running of the vaccination campaign in my city.”

“The prosecutor of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the investigating judge of the Taranto Court,” commented Nazareno Dinoi, “believed him and served me (after 4 years) with a criminal conviction, with a fine of €1,800 without a suspended sentence, which I opposed. The same criminal conviction was served on the commentators on my article, and they have also opposed it.” LT