Some 521 Italian journalists
and bloggers suffered threats and abuse due to their work in
2015, Ossigeno per l'Informazione (OpI) said after verifying the
reports.
The watchdog organization backed by the Italian journalists
federation FNSI and the professional journalists body Ordine Dei
Giornalisti (OdG) stressed that the actual number of
intimidations was at least ten times higher.
OpI said that the figures showed that journalists working
on sensitive issues were still at very high risk. In 2014, the
watchdog reported 506 victims, a 31% increase on the previous
year.
In the month of December 2015 alone, some 49 journalists,
bloggers, photojournalists, cameramen and editors were
threatened and two - Alessia Candito and Michele Inserra -
received death threats and are now living under police
protection.
Police protection was also provided to the two journalists
Gisella Cicciò from La Gazzetta del Sud and Rosaria Brancato
from Tempostretto.it, who reported on developments in a scandal
involving 23 of the 40 Messina municipal councillors.
According to national daily Repubblica, between 30 and 50
journalists were living under police protection in May of this
year after receiving threats.
In August of this year, a parliamentary anti-mafia
commission report on the condition of journalists threatened by
the mafia also said that organized crime attacks and
intimidation against journalists had been rising steadily
between 2006 and 2014.
The report said such acts of intimidation go almost totally
unpunished since "there are very few incidents in which the
perpetrators have been identified, tried, and convicted".
The report also pointed to the "unscrupulous and
intimidatory" use of lawsuits to induce journalists to tone down
their investigative reports.
TV journalist Milena Gabanelli, for example, has been sued
for over 250 million euros by various disgruntled subjects in
the course of her career as a hard-hitting investigative
reporter.
The report went on to denounce a "more subtle but no less
harmful form of violence, which is the situation of extreme job
and economic insecurity of the vast majority of the journalists
who come under threat".
Freelancers are the "de facto supporting framework of the
entire Italian news system" but have no juridical protection,
and "this grave lack to remedied as soon as possible", the
commission said.
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