Mattarella: “Institutions must guarantee an independent press and pluralism”

“Creating and guaranteeing the conditions for an independent press is a task that challenges institutions, civil society in its various forms, the media industry, the professional conscience of each journalist”. They are the words spoken by Sergio Mattarella in a message sent on the occasion of the 29th National Congress of the Italian press organized by Fnsi in Riccione. The President of the Republic wanted to underline the importance of free and independent information for a democratic state.

“An economically healthy society proposes a publishing industry capable of strongly affirming its function – he specified – not oriented towards partisan interests, but aimed at realizing the provision of the Constitutional Charter which reaffirms the citizens’ right to free information”. It follows, underlined the head of state, that “the professional activity of journalists cannot be subjected to harassment, intimidation or violation of their freedom. Everyone’s freedom is at stake”.

It is therefore necessary for citizens to be informed by an independent world of information, where pluralism is also guaranteed. “The state of transformation that the media industry is experiencing in the context of digitization cannot be translated into an impoverishment of the cultural and information heritage made available. In this regard – adds Mattarella – the direct intervention to favor, also with public resources, information pluralism, supporting innovation processes, with the confirmation of the decisive role of journalistic professionalism and responsibility in defining news”.

The president of the Senate also spoke about freedom of information, Ignatius LaRussa. “Only through a real defense of the rights and dignity of every professional and information operator is it possible to ensure citizens solid pillars of justice, transparency and participation”, reiterated the FdI exponent in his message. “I remain firmly convinced – he continued – that the freedom of a nation is commensurate with the full freedom to inform and to be informed, without foreclosures or prejudices: an essential condition for the exercise of any other democratic, social and civil freedom”.

The Congress was attended by the Minister of Culture, Gennaro Sangiuliano, which has emphasized the precariousness in the world of journalism. “The great scourge of the precariousness of information needs to be healed also through aid to publishing”, she said. “It is necessary – he continued – to recognize a contribution for the passage of a fixed-term journalistic or collaboration contract to an open-ended contract, because precariousness does not help the authority of information”. According to the minister, it is wrong to discourage young people from entering the journalism profession, based on the consideration that they will end up being precarious, also because “being a journalist is a spiritual mission as well as a profession”. And he added: “Publishers must understand that the web is a huge opportunity. If the information offer increases, journalists must also increase”. Sangiuliano then recalled that he intends to approve the law on the fair rental fee for bookshops by public bodies in city centres.

In his annual report, the secretary of the Fnsi Raffaele Lorusso has drawn up a balance sheet of the world of information. “Signs of the Italian economy returning to pre-pandemic trends do not concern the information sector, where the vertical drop in turnover and market erosion continue, especially in the printed press, with serious repercussions on the labor market – he explained – Four years ago, in the Congress of Levico Terme, we highlighted how from 2007, the year in which the iPhone and Facebook made their appearance, to 2019, the copies of newspapers sold had increased from 6.1 million to 2.6 million per day, given the latter including digital copies. Four years later, the newspapers sell just over a million copies. We are facing an unstoppable decline – he concluded – which requires the development of strategies, hopefully shared, by part of all the players in the system, but also an awareness on the part of politics and public opinion because, together with copies and jobs, there is less vital space for democracy”.