Mafia and information. Mp Rosi Bindi, bosses can’t stand reporters

This passage is taken from the final report by the MP Rosi Bindi, president of the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission, presented on 22 February 2018 at Palazzo Madama

The mafias can’t stand the work of reporters who dig into their affairs and make their criminal plots known to the public. An information with a straight back, free from conditioning and able to exercise with correctness and objectivity an indispensable function of criticism and narration of reality is a fundamental ally in the battle against the mafia powers.

The commission has developed an intense and fruitful dialogue with the information workers in the investigation of the condition of intimidated journalists threatened by the mafias whose final report recalls analyses and conclusions.

In Italy over the last nine years more than two thousand journalists have been punished in various ways: warnings, beatings, layoffs, transfers, reckless complaints. Every two days three reporters are threatened, a low estimate considering that it only takes into account the episodes that are actually reported. Currently, more than 30 journalists are subjected to protective measures by the Ministry of the Interior. There are no free zones and the old paradigm of a mafia violence concentrated in the southern regions is now outdated.

The report also analyzes the flanking of news media (televisions, radio, newspapers, websites) linked in various ways to the mafia clans who carry out targeted campaigns of de-legitimization against representatives of the political and judicial world and journalists engaged in denunciation of illegalities in the territory.

The report also advances proposals for strengthening the forms of criminal protection for threatened journalists; for punishing the repeated publication of false news aimed at denigrating or delegitimizing individuals or institutions; for guaranteeing the independence of journalists and overcome the logic of freelancers, the most exposed to mafia pressures, with a greater stabilization of labor relations and ensuring transparency of ownership of newspapers.

ASP ONY (gt)