Fnsi to desert Meloni's end-of-year presser over 'gag' bill

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 27 - Italian journalists union Fnsi said Wednesday that its top management will not attend Premier Giorgia Meloni's end-of-year press conference organised by the National Council of the Order of Journalists and the Parliamentary Press Association on Thursday in protest against a bill that would ban the publication of the contents of preventative-detention warrants.
    The Fnsi said last week it was set to stage a series of protests against the proposal, claiming it is a "gag" that violates the right to report the news.
    The decision not to attend the press conference "is not a call to desert an institutional appointment that colleagues are invited to for work, but the beginning of the mobilisation that the journalists' union will put in place against measures that smack of censorship and to defend the dignity of the profession," read a statement.
    The union said its first protest "will be a walk in front of the palaces of power wearing a gag" on Thursday morning, and invited journalists to gather at the Fsni headquarters in Rome's Via delle Botteghe Oscure 54 at 10 am.
    Last Wednesday Fnsi Secretary General Alessandra Costante descried the bill as a "freedom-killing measure, not only with respect to article 21 of the Constitution (guaranteeing the freedom of expression and opinion, ed.), but also with respect to individual freedoms".
    "It is very dangerous not to know whether a person has been arrested or not," he said.
    "And it is not only dangerous for the freedom of the press, it is also dangerous for the recipient of the pre-trial detention order.
    "The memory of dictatorships, of the disappeared, of the people who vanish at the gates of Europe without anyone knowing anything about it, Alexei Navalny, for example, must raise our attention, including the attention of newspaper editors, who must join their journalist colleagues in this fight, and of the institutions".
    Italy's Order of Journalists, the sector's professional association, has also expressed its opposition to the ban.
    Photo: Fnsi Secretary General Alessandra Costante. (ANSA).