What kind of journalism is Italian journalism? Does he always tell the truth or does he also tell lies? Is he at the service of power or is he its watchdog? Is he above the parties or is he taking sides?
We journalists we don't have a good reputation in our country (and not only in ours to be honest). According to a survey commissioned by the State University of Milan, 55 percent of those interviewed gave it a negative opinion.
The role of talk shows and the decline of the Italian media
Ernesto Galli of the Loggia in a recent editorial on Corriere della Sera he wrote that the media system is the "director" of the phenomenon whereby in Italy we discuss "trivial things and never serious ones". This is not insignificant because it prevents the public debate from raising its level and addressing the real problems.
After all, it's understandable. In Italy the place dedicated to political confrontation is no longer Parliament, it is talk shows which as the word itself says are a mix of discussion and entertainment.
For example, for twenty years the country has been losing positions compared to its competitors but the issue of decline is not in the spotlight. The Italian economic system presents areas of liveliness and absolute excellence, which make Made in Italy one of the most appreciated brands in the world but as a whole it fails to develop thatincreased productivity which is the basis of the structural growth of any economy. But we don't talk about this.
There are sectors of the establishment who turn their mouths against how the media portray the country. Years ago, after the season of Stefano Folli, on the upper floors of Via Solferino it was decided to offer the super management of the Corriere della Sera to a personality of undisputed prestige. The initiative was eccentric and unprecedented, but with it it was intended to place the first Italian newspaper in the wake of major European and Anglo-Saxon newspapers (Nyt, Wapo, Ft, Faz, Figaro). In the end he didn't care and returned to Via Solferino Paolo Mieli.
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi five years earlier he had cultivated the idea of an initiative that would spark a serious discussion on the future of the country. He had promised to make the risk of economic and social decline the heart of his first end-of-year speech. But then he thought better of it. He feared that the media would end up turning the message into an occasion for new political conflict setting aside discussion of the real problems.
The Mediterranean model of journalism
Of course it is wrong to generalize. Luckily there are in Italy excellent reporters and commentators, investigative journalists and watchdogs of power, good newspapers and highly regarded websites dedicated to analysis and in-depth analysis like the one you are reading.
However, the mass mediaologists Daniel Hallin and Paolo Mancini have classified Italy as a whole in the so-called Mediterranean model of journalism, a journalism that is more horizontal than vertical, that is it speaks more to the Palace than to the end users of news (the famous 1550 readers evoked by Enzo Forcella in a book that is said to have cost him the expulsion from La Stampa), a journalism that rather than acting as a bridge between the establishment and the citizens takes sides (thus losing some degree of “credibility” according to Fabio Martini, editorialist for La Stampa and scholar of information problems). It is also for this reason, according to Hallin and Mancini, that Italian journalism, concentrated on the events of the Palace, he never saw the new thing coming.
He didn't anticipate the Lega phenomenon (exploded in the 1987 elections but already evident in the previous local elections), nor Tangentopolis (discovered thanks to the magistrates despite there being no shortage of signs) nor the boom in Five stars, nor (as many in the world must say) the financial crisis of 2008. Journalism, with due exceptions, has obviously mostly pandered to the political class rather than critically stimulated it towards change.
The living rooms of politics and journalism
The key to the media circus is proximity to power. The salons of politics and journalism in Rome are always open. In the First Republic it had a monopoly Maria Angiolillo, whose rites were narrated with surgical precision by Bruno Vespa and Candida Morvillo. Today, since Donna Maria passed away, her audience has flocked to many different living rooms and salons. What happens there is told by the well-informed Dagospia website and immortalized by Umberto Pizzi, the VIP photographer.
A well-known centre-right parliamentarian, a cultured and experienced man, usually invites around twenty journalists of various backgrounds but nevertheless reliable to dinner at his house in the centre. The diners spread out across the various tables in the large living room. The landlord knows everything about the center-right and what he says helps us understand that cosa moves in his political field. At the end, each participant receives a gift, usually a Marinella tie. So do others.
The contiguity with power concerns politics, economics, finance and the judiciary where perhaps it has had and still has its greatest expression. Here, as Tangentopoli commented on the phenomenon some time later Indro Montanelli: “When scholars have to reconstruct this page of national history they will have a serious problem. They will not be able to draw heavily on newspaper and news sources. And do you know why? Journalists, with obvious exceptions, during Tangentopoli they followed the wind that was blowing, they let themselves be carried away by the breath of the square and often by the witch hunt. They were true arsonists and were guilty of an infamous abdication in the face of the power of the crowd."
Within certain limits, contiguity with power it is a "common phenomenon" also in other countries. The point is that Italian journalists, with the necessary exceptions of course, do not seem to consider the information system as "something that has value in themselves and this makes them more conditionable and therefore generally perceived as less credible" explains Richard Heuze, the former correspondent of Le Figaro from Rome, someone who knows well the reality of our country in which he has now decided to live.
Spectacularization and the search for political conflict
Talk shows dominate the entire information system whose main feature is spectacularization and the search for political conflict rather than the exploration of problems. In Italy it could have happened in spades Ukrainian war the most radical exponents of the "enemy" or even the Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation were interviewed with the excuse of providing information, as if no one knew him. Or it could happen that by always taking refuge behind the constraints of pluralism, in the midst of the pandemic, space has been given to the most syelp thesis no vax. It is no wonder that in some cases the most competent people refused to participate. Like Nathalie Tocci, director of the Iai, according to whom her presence in the talks would end up "legitimizing the most bizarre theses that are expressed there". Thanks to talk shows, it also happens that a questionable character like Alessandro Orsini can be launched into the television empyrean, launched and then abandoned like an old rag, then recovered by Bianca Berlingue
With the arrival at Right-wing government the music hasn't changed. Indeed, if anything, certain characteristics have become more accentuated, taking into account the strength of the parliamentary majority that Giorgia Meloni has, and the selection of the media based on the degree of "friendship" has intensified.
Today the Italian information system revolves around a vast and colorful media circus. The system is essentially structured around two television stations, Rai is public and Mediaset is private, two large national newspapers, several politically aligned newspapers and some smaller newspapers with a reputation. TV has become the main reference medium (and this is normal), social media exploded.
However, the printed paper, although in increasing difficulty, has not lost its influence. Even if the copies sold have been reduced by two thirds, the number of newspapers is increasing and recently a healthcare entrepreneur who is also a centre-right politician like Antonio Angelucci invested in the supply chain of pro-government newspapers with the arrival of Giorgia Meloni in power. Furthermore, Espresso, Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno and l'Unità are back on newsstands. The Quotidiano del Sud has been in print for some time. Ownership of an editorial medium remains a non-negligible source of power.
Quality information vs media noise
According to the editorialists of Financial Times Ferdinando Giugliano and John Lloyd the relationship between journalism and politics in Italy has become closer with the arrival on the scene of Silvio Berlusconi which with its enormous economic and media power has forced information operators to take sides, either here or there (Paper Armies, Feltrinelli).
According to a study by the magazine The Mill however, what prevails today in Italy is a journalism dominated by television, made up of jokes for use and consumption by the next day's newspapers, declarations, "on the fly" interviews, hyperboles (the cow in the corridor by Pierluigi Bersani), in many cases a justice capable of destroying the lives of people destined to be recognized as innocent. This way of providing information, with the necessary exceptions of course, has found open doors in political personnel willing to neglect institutional realities in favor of the media space. An appearance on a talk show is more important for a politician than a parliamentary session.
Quality information thus ends up getting lost in this incessant media noise basically made up of news that is not news, easy denunciations to appeal to the public's "nothing works here" tastes, treatment of the most varied problems in the same context. The paradox of the phenomenon is that political chatter dominates while respect for politics understood as a high function was lacking, even when politicians appeared on the scene who had the ambition of a true modernization of the country.
In this context, politicians must play the game. The result of this daily mix of important content and political politics, debate and entertainment is that it is no longer possible to distinguish between the good and the bad and in the eyes of the public politicians and journalists ultimately seem to belong to an indistinguishable universe. While the country's big problems fester.
