Carlo Bartoli, president of Italy's
National Order of Journalists, the sector's professional
association, said Thursday that he shared concerns over an
amendment to a law that would ban the publication of the
contents of preventative-detention warrants.
"There are some empty benches in this room: the (Italian
journalists union) Fnsi has intended to desert theis conference
in protest," said Bartoli at the opening of Premier Giorgia
Meloni's end-of-year press conference organised by the National
Order of Journalists and the parliamentary press association.
It is a protest that in substance I share," he added.
"We are alarmed by the approval of an amendment that risks
lowering the curtain on information on judicial matters,"
continued Bartoli, calling for a "thorough rethink" of the libel
reform under discussion in the Senate.
The law proposal "does not seriously disincentivise reckless
litigation and instead compresses citizens' right to free
information," he said.
Last week the Fnsi said that its top management would not attend
Meloni's end-of-year press conference in protest against the
amendment banning the publication of the contents of
preventative-detention orders, claiming it is a "gag" that
violates the
right to report the news.
The decision not to attend the press conference "is not a call
to desert an institutional appointment that colleagues are
invited to for work, but the beginning of the mobilisation that
the journalists' union will put in place against measures that
smack of censorship and to defend the dignity of the
profession," read a statement.
Fnsi Secretary General Alessandra Costante has descried the
amendment as a "freedom-killing measure, not only with respect
to article 21 of the Constitution (guaranteeing the freedom of
expression and opinion, ed.), but also with respect to
individual freedoms".
"It is very dangerous not to know whether a person has been
arrested or not," he said.
"And it is not only dangerous for the freedom of the press, it
is also dangerous for the recipient of the pre-trial detention
order.
"The memory of dictatorships, of the disappeared, of the people
who vanish at the gates of Europe without anyone knowing
anything about it, Alexei Navalny, for example, must raise our
attention, including the attention of newspaper editors, who
must join their journalist colleagues in this fight, and of the
institutions," he said.
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