APPEAL FOR PRESS FREEDOM IN ITALY

The following appeal by three eminent jurists has been signed by almost 310,000 people, including artists, Nobel prize winners, writers and politicians from many countries. A demonstration for the freedom of press will be held in Romw on 19 September. The link for you to sign can be found at the bottom of this post

The libel action against “Repubblica” is the last in a long list of attacks against this daily which can only be seen as attempts at silencing the free press, at benumbing public opinion, at removing us from the international information scene and ultimately at making our Country the exception to the rule of Democracy.

The questions addressed to our Prime Minister are real questions that have prompted people’s interest not only in Italy but also in the media across the world. If they are considered to be “rhetorical” questions that suggest answers that displease the person to whom they are addressed, then there is only one and very easy way of responding: the reaction should certainly not be that of silencing the people who ask those questions.

The response instead is that of intimidating those who exercise the right and duty of “seeking, receiving and imparting information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”, as stated in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved by the Assembly of Nations when memory was still very much alive of the way information degenerated into propaganda under the illiberal and antidemocratic regimes of the 20th century.

What is astonishing and worrying is that not only are these initiatives not unanimously stigmatized, but they are not even reported by the media, and that furthermore there are jurists who are even willing to give them legal form, utterly dismissing the harm this will cause to the very seriousness and credibility of the Law.



http://temi.repubblica.it/repubblicaspeciale-repubblicaspeciale-ten-new-questions-to-silvio-berlusconi/2009/08/28/appeal-by-three-jurists/