Leading artists, intellectuals and
politicians at the weekend backed an appeal for the safeguarding
of jobs at ANSA after management said earlier this month it
would need to lay off 100 staff to make up for a
five-million-euro budget shortfall this year.
Among the first signatories are ex-president of the former
USSR Mikhail Gorbachev, crusading anti-mafia writer Roberto
Saviano, novelists Andrea Camilleri and Dacia Maraini,
singer-songwriters Paolo Conte and Gino Paoli, and award-winning
film directors Gabriele Salvatores and Giuseppe Tornatore.
"In a world of opinions, I'm with the news," Paoli said.
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) also
added a message of solidarity.
"ANSA is part of the nation's - not just newspaper
publishers' - heritage, and the time has come for this to be
recognized, including by envisaging a new ownership structure of
the agency that would safeguard its role as a guarantor for all.
"We call on politics, institutions and publishing to assess
the ongoing labor dispute and the outlook for a relaunching of
ANSA, with a sense of responsibility that goes beyond mere
accounting operations because what is at stake are not only many
jobs, but above all a piece of our democracy".
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