Pubblichiamo di seguito la relazione tenuta da Tana de Zulueta ( in rappresentanza di Articolo21) in occasione della recente conferenza sulla censura organizzata dalla Fondazione Samir Kassir a Beirut

"SKEYES"                         

   As ambassador Patrick Laurent said in his opening remarks this morning, censorship has many faces. Even in an old European democracy with robust media and a rich and varied tradition of journalism such as Italy’s, distortions can arise, with concrete consequences in terms of freedom of expression .

   You will all have heard of what is commonly referred to as the Italian “anomaly”.  An anomaly which arises from the unique position of the Italian Prime Minister and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who is both owner of one of the largest television and communications groups in Europe while at the same time heading a government majority with effective control over the State broadcaster RAI.

   The Italian anomaly is in fact a combination of three anomalies. The first, and most obvious,  is the anomaly mentioned above, which constitutes a case of conflict of interest which is certainly unmatched in Europe, and, given the scale of the business interests involved, quite likely in the world.

   The second anomaly is that constituted by one of the highest levels of media concentration in Europe. Characterising this anomaly is the “duopoly” between the public service broadcaster, RAI, and the privately-owned commercial operator, Mediaset, which is owned by Mr Berlusconi and his family.

   The third anomaly is the strong hold of politics over the public broadcasting service RAI. While other European State broadcasters have consolidated their independence, both in their statutes and in journalists’ professional ethos, no such tradition exists in Italy. Traditionally, “pluralism” in RAI has meant the careful partition of jobs and airspace according to political party affiliation. The absolute allegiance of the State broadcaster to government and the country’s political parties was recently sanctioned by law. According to Italy’s current broadcasting law, the power to appoint the nine members of the board of RAI is divided between Parliament and the Government, with six members going to the governing majority, while the Government also appoints the company’s managing director, who has overall budget control and the right to appoint service and channel chiefs.

   How does all this pan out? The first result, as official figures confirm, is a huge preponderance of air-space devoted to the government and to the Prime Minister in particular. Another price in terms of quality, is an evident absence of independent analysis, at least on the national news. A confrontational political climate has lead to growing pressure on the media. Following the latest round of politically-motivated appointments in RAI and a vote in Parliament in support of a new law designed to drastically reduce, with threats of fines and prison sentences,  what journalists can write or say about ongoing criminal enquiries, Italy’s national union of journalists invited citizens to a public demonstration in Rome in October last year. This was the first large-scale demo in support of press freedoms in Italy. Its success was a measure of growing unease both among media workers and the public.

   The perception of an “Italian problem” as regards media pluralism and freedom of expression is not limited to local actors. Next month two non-Italian organisations, the Open Society Institute and the London-based Index on Censorship, will be presenting submissions on threats to freedom of expression in Italy to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva when it discusses Italy’s compliance with existing treaties and covenants. A number of organisations, such as Reporters Sans Frontières, Freedom House, the OSCE and the UN Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression in the Media, have expressed concerns about media concentration and freedom of expression in Italy.

   And yet, of course, if you visit Italy, at least at first glance, things will look just fine. You will see newstands brimming with newspapers and magazines. Back in your apartment or hotel room your TV handset will offer you what looks like a quantity of different TV channels. Dissenting journalists are not arrested (though they might have trouble finding a job or securing promotion).  A word of caution, however. Assassination as a means of silencing journalists does exist in Italy, probably the only OECD member State where journalists live under police protection because of murder threats from criminal organisations. A predicament now known to the world thanks to the case of Roberto Saviano, the author of the world-wide best-seller  Gomorra. The Mafia does not like people publicising or looking into its affairs, and  a number of journalists have been killed for having done so.

   During this session we have been invited to look at economic constraints on freedom of the media. I believe, in fact, that a close look at the Italian media market, and, specifically, the state of the advertising market, can go a long way to help us understand just how, in practise, freedom of expression is limited in Italy today.

   The first clues are supplied by a snapshot of advertising sales in Italy. Our best industry source is the consultancy firm Nielsen’s Media Monthly Report. In its January 2010 issue, available on the company website, we learn, predictably, that advertising sales dropped sharply for the second year running last year. Everybody lost, but the print media suffered most. The Nielsen pie-chart brings one fact clearly home: over 50% of advertising sales in Italy are absorbed by television, with the print media now left with a meagre 16.4%. The rest of the world is moving that way fast, with serious consequences for the viability of major newspapers in the United States, for example. But Italy has been this way for a long time, with, in some cases, negative consequences in terms of quality and editorial independence. With low sales and shrinking advertising resources, Italian newspapers have become, in a number of cases, the (costly) adjuncts of business empires focused on other industry sectors, usually with a stake in State subsidies or procurement – and an interest in being nice to the government.

   A look at how the world economic crisis has affected different media in Italy will show up all three of the Italian media market anomalies which I mentioned at the beginning. In 2008, the last year for which we have full figures, we learn that while everybody else took a beating, Mediaset, the Italian Prime Minister’s family company, actually managed to slightly increase its advertising sales to 3 billion 35 million euro (out of a national total of close to 8 billion euro: 38% of the market). What happened? Advertisers have flocked to the Prime Minister’s TV channels -- in spite of  a drop in viewing figures -- while, to a considerable extent, losing interest in the State broadcaster RAI. The same thing had happened in 2002, the last time Berlusconi won the elections. This is probably not just a case of currying favour. RAI has limits to the advertising space it can offer and is therefore prevented from offering equally attractive packages as Mediaset.

   In another development, Mr Berlusconi's conflict of ineterest as head of government and owner of a media group appears even more evident. Quoting another Nielsen report (not available on their website) last year the magazine l’Espresso revealed that during the first three months of 2009 the government budget for institutional advertising appears to have been directed, almost in its entirety, to Mediaset’s three TV channels (a 237% increase) with very little left for newspapers.

   In October last year Mr Berlusconi asked businessmen at a public meeting to stop spending money on advertisements on print outlets which criticise the government or publish “pessimistic” assessments of the economy. He has attacked journalists, including, in some cases, the State broadcaster, and launched multi-million defamation suits against both Italian and foreign papers.

   This sort of behaviour does not usually go down well with the press,  but on the whole Mr Berlusconi gets a very easy ride. It does help, of course, if you either own the TV channels through which most Italians get their news, or can hire and fire the newscasters on RAI’s two biggest channels. As a precautionary principle, and with just one major exception, Italy’s mainstream newspapers seem to have adopted a posture of “entente cordiale” with the government. This makes them generally prudent about running critical stories or editorials. With the exception of Rupert Murdock’s Sky Italia satellite channels (10% of viewers) television is even more cautious. As a result, BBC viewers in London, for example, were told a lot more about Berlusconi’s sex scandals last summer than most TV viewers in Italy. The result, of course, is anything but a level playing field, either in political terms or in terms of competition and market access.

   The response from Europe’s institutions has been muted, so far. It is our belief, however, that the Italian anomaly risks setting a dangerous precedent.

   To explain this, let me quote a curious episode which occurred to me when I visited Kazakhstan as an election monitor during their last presidential elections. Speaking at the press conference during which international monitors expressed some reservations about these elections, I mentioned that we were critical of the fact the President’s daughter had acquired control of the country’s principal TV channel. At this point a Kazakh journalist put up his hand and asked me if I was Italian. I said I was. “But in Italy”, so he correctly objected, “doesn’t the Prime Minister own the television himself?”

   If it’s OK in Italy, so the reasoning goes, surely it’s OK in Kazakhstan. Or, indeed, anywhere else.

*Tana de Zulueta
Articolo 21
www.articolo21.info