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.
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