NOTHING HAPPENED in Italy yesterday. Accordingly, newspapers disappeared from the newsstands and we had a blissfully peaceful day without radio and TV news bulletins.
Well, not quite.
What happened yesterday was that the national journalists’ union, the FNSI, called a day-long strike in protest at the Berlusconi government’s so-called “Gag Law”, a Bill intended to regulate the use of wiretaps.
The government claims the major thrust of the draft legislation is to protect citizens’ privacy from over-intrusive police and magistrates. Critics, including magistrates, journalists, industrialists, intellectuals and opposition forces as well as thousands of bloggers, claim, however, the measure is a gift to organised crime and will further muzzle the media.
The Bill would make it harder for police to obtain authorisation for wiretaps, would restrict their duration and would impose stiff fines on newspaper publishers and journalists who publish wiretap transcripts before investigations reach the trial stage, a process which in Italy can take years.
Critics argue that, in reality, this legislation is designed to protect the Berlusconi government from the sort of embarrassing revelations which last summer saw the prime minister caught up in a “sexy-party” scandal.
Even if there is widespread opposition to this Bill, not all the protesters agreed with the strike. A number of web commentators pointed to a fundamental contradiction – journalists, who are protesting attempts to silence them, respond by going silent.
This was a contradiction too good to be missed by Vittorio Feltri, editor of the Berlusconi family-owned daily Il Giornale, one of three national dailies which did not respect the strike call yesterday. In a front-page leader,Feltri wrote: "How can you call for freedom of the press by voluntarily renouncing on the freedom to print daily newspapers? More than a contradiction, it is simple nonsense. It is as if the world's hungry went on a hunger strike against those who do not give them anything to eat . . ."
Despite those reservations, even Feltri expressed grave reservations about the “Gag Law”, urging the government to change key articles concerning the publishing of wiretap transcripts.