Italy below Benin in Freedom of the press
Reporters Without Frontiers is publishing a worldwide index of countries according to their respect for press freedom.
It shows that such freedom is under threat everywhere, with the 20 bottom-ranked countries drawn from Asia, Africa, Latin America and Europe. The situation in especially bad in Asia, which contains the five worst offenders - North Korea, China, Burma, Turkmenistan and Bhutan.
The top end of the list shows that rich countries have no monopoly of press freedom. Costa Rica and Benin are examples of how growth of a free press does not just depend on a country's material prosperity.
The index was drawn up by asking journalists, researchers and legal experts to answer 50 questions about the whole range of press freedom violations (such as murders or arrests of journalists, censorship, pressure, state monopolies in various fields, punishment of press law offences and regulation of the media). The final list includes 139 countries.
The others were not included in the absence of reliable information.
Right at the top of the list four countries share first place - Finland, Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands. These northern European states scrupulously respect press freedom in their own countries but also speak up for it elsewhere, for example recently in Eritrea and Zimbabwe. The highest-scoring country outside Europe is Canada, which comes fifth.
Costa Rica better placed than the United States
The poor ranking of the United States (17th) is mainly because of the number of journalists arrested or imprisoned there. Arrests are often because they refuse to reveal their sources in court. Also, since the 11 September attacks, several journalists have been arrested for crossing security lines at some official buildings.
Italy gets bad marks in Europe
The 15 member-countries of the European Union (EU) all score well except for Italy (40th), where news diversity is under serious threat. Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi is turning up the pressure on the state-owned television stations, has named his henchmen to help run them and continues to combine his job as head of government with being boss of a privately-owned media group. The imprisonment of journalist Stefano Surace, convicted of press offences from 30 years ago, as well as the monitoring of journalists, searches, unjustified legal summonses and confiscation of equipment, are all responsible for the country's low ranking.
But freedom of the press in Italy is a problem far more ancient than the current government.
It is a long story, linked to a culture of patronage and lack of ideological and economic independence of publishers, similar to patterns of ‘global media networks’ which are currently developing thanks to internationalisation policies, where a mixture of commercial and political interests are allowed to control media, which should instead, clearly, be independent.
Poor press freedom is the direct result of lack of media independence: the media machine should criticize, not serve or promote, the economic and political establishments.
Instead, it just licks.
The consequences are clear: no transparency, no democracy, and only money matters, because money can buy everything, especially media policies.
In Italy, furthermore, the media – like the rest of the economy – is ruled by Masonic associations, most of which, by now, are instrumental to keep the system of corruption in place.
All publishers and press editors in Italy are freemasons of some sort, that’s how they stay in business. And keep everybody else out of it.
Freedom of the press? More likely ‘I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine”.
Reporters Sans Frontiers
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