Italy. Story of a newspaper sued one hundred time told by the editor in chief

Questo articolo è disponibile anche in:

Michele Finizio talks about the latest incident when his colleague Giusi Cavallo’s PC was cloned for a lawsuit that was never identified

OSSIGENO May 9^th  2025 – The Legal Help Desk of Ossigeno (details here on the Legal Desk) has granted a financial contribution (gratuity) to cover the legal expenses incurred by journalists Michele Finizio and Giusi Cavallo of the online newspaper Basilicata24, who had to face a trial from which they were acquitted with a judgement that states: the action  does not constitute an offence. In this text, written for Ossigeno, Finizio recounts the story and others that have affected his newspaper, similar to those of many Italian journalists who are the target of frivolous lawsuits and complaints, SLAPPs and other retaliations for having spoken about taboo subjects or having revealed troublesome truths. Ossigeno’s Legal Desk works in collaboration with Media Defence and provides free legal aid  to journalists, bloggers and rights defenders who find themselves in difficulty due to legal actions brought on a specious basis in relation to the information they publish.

Ossigeno’s Legal Desk has always been close to us over the years and has now granted us a financial contribution to cover part of the legal costs we have had to bear to defend ourselves from the lawsuit  of a powerful manager of the health service in Basilicata involved in a legal case for rigged tenders, a lawsuit from which we were acquitted. Also on behalf of my colleague Giusi Cavallo, I would, therefore, like to thank Ossigeno per l’Informazione, the president Alberto Spampinato, the lawyer Andrea Di Pietro and all the staff of the association also for the closeness they have shown us.

The lawsuit of the manager for which we received the Ossigeno gratuity had seemed vexatious  and reckless from the outset. It arrived without our  having been asked for a correction, in relation to an editorial in which our newspaper criticized the fact that managers of various public bodies, although investigated, arrested and on trial, not only had not been suspended but had even been rewarded. In the end, the judge of the Court of Potenza acquitted us with a sentence that states: the action does not constitute an offence. But this is only one of the many legal proceedings that have affected me and the other journalists of Basilicata24.it, my online newspaper.

Over the course of 14 years, Giusi Cavallo and I have accumulated about 100 lawsuits. They have been presented by politicians, managers, entrepreneurs, judges. We have always been acquitted, with the exception of two cases for which the appeal and the Supreme Court judgments are pending after a first-instance conviction.

We have often been sued for absurd events. An example of a Kafkaesque process concerns what happened after our formal complaints of having been attacked during the journalistic investigation into the so-called unlicensed wind farm. The attackers counter-sued us accusing us of defamation for the article in which we informed the public of the attack we endured. The video that indisputably depicts  the attack is on file. The two trial proceedings have been joined. Therefore, we are both the injured party and the defendants. During the hearings, even the judge became confused. We are waiting for the outcome.

Among the many, another case deserves to be remembered for how it developed and concluded. On May 30^th  2016, the Carabinieri of the Investigative Unit of Potenza, on behalf of the Catanzaro Prosecutor’s Office, served a notice of investigation on the journalist Giusi Cavallo, then editor-in-chief of Basilicata24.it, for an article published on October 29^th  2014, signed by her and me. The alleged offence, charged only to her, is of libel against Marcello Pittella, at the time president of the Basilicata Region: an offence of defamation in conjunction with others, but it is not known with whom.

With the warranty notice, they notified the journalist of an order to exhibit the body of evidence or something pertinent to the crime. On the same day, an article was published on Basilicata24.it with the title “Marcello Pittella denounces the director of Basilicata24. Carabinieri in the editorial office”. President Pittella replied in another newspaper: “I don’t remember ever filing a lawsuit against Basilicata24… I could hardly forget it…”  But how is that possible? Defamation is an offence alleged by a lawsuit. And so Pittella’s statement provoked our irony with an article in response entitled “Pittella sues without knowing it”. Giusi Cavallo went to the Carabinieri barracks in via Pretoria where she had been summoned. A marshal gave her a notice of investigation and informed her that he would accompany her to the editorial office to proceed with the cloning  of her computer’s hard disk. She tried in vain to understand why, for an article from two years earlier, and for an alleged crime of defamation, she should have her PC cloned. Not having found a lawyer, the reporter refused to carry out the order. The marshal then contacted someone on the phone, probably the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, and said she had to proceed.

Accompanied by two officers and an IT technician, with a police car, Giusi Cavallo was taken to the editorial office where, to avoid the confiscation of the computers, she had to acquiesce to cloning. Perhaps with a lawyer present, things would have gone differently. The copying operations continued from 11am to approximately 5pm. During those hours, she was not allowed to leave, not even to go to the bathroom. Once the copying operations were completed, Cavallo was taken back to the barracks for the final formalities and then finally managed to return home. The  title of the alleged offence was changed from libel to slander. But in the end, three years later, in 2019, the case was definitively dismissed. We were able to gain access to the files of that case only after a few years and, surprise of surprises, we discovered that the former president of the Basilicata Region Pittella was right when he said “I never sued Basilicata24”, much less the journalist Giusi Cavallo.

I could give many more examples to show how our journalistic activity has been hampered by unfounded and specious accusations of defamation.

Michele Finizio