Find solution on news agencies (4)

(ANSA) - Rome, March 29 - Senate Speaker Pietro Grasso on Wednesday called for a "satisfactory" solution to a dispute pitting Italian news agencies against the government over a new Europe-wide tender for news services, replacing traditional funding via conventions. "There has been tension between news agencies and the government...a tension that led to a general strike by agencies on Saturday," Grasso said. "It is necessary to find a satisfactory solution". All of Italy's news agencies, including ANSA, struck for 24 hours from six o'clock a.m. Saturday, in the first such action, to protest Sports and Media Minister Luca Lotti's refusal to discuss the agencies' demand to pull the tender, which they say threatens media pluralism and independence, as well as their very existence. Lotti recently said there would be two tenders for news services, one for the public administration and the other for the foreign ministry.
    Grasso went on to say that "it is necessary to find a solution that safeguards employment levels, pluralism, and which, at the same time, reorganises this sector; I hope that the necessary talks between the sides lead to shared solutions, satisfactory for all". He also addressed the problem of low journalists' pay, saying they should be paid enough to "ensure a decent standard of living". Grasso said 40% of the more than 35,000 journalists active in Italy, most of them under 35, "produce annual income lower than 5,000 euros.
    "If they earn so little it means that the issue of precariousness and the dignity of the profession imposes reflections and actions that can no longer be put off".
    All journalists, Grasso added, should be enabled to be "free and independent".
    Grasso said there had been a growing "crisis" in the media world over the last few years but the "short-term" response from Italian media groups, privileging "quantity over quality", had been wrong.