The character assassination of a Berlusconi critic

Dino Boffo, a staunch critic of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has resigned as editor in chief of the Italian daily Avvenire after Berlusconi's newspaper Il Giornale accused him of homosexuality and of harassing his lover's wife. The left-liberal paper La Repubblica writes: "This lie has not the slightest thing to do with journalism ... and far more to do with the Soviet technique of disinformation that turns journalism into nothing more than backbiting and slander. Dino Boffo has been publicly murdered. The Anglo-Saxon world has a word for what happened to the chief editor of Avvenire yesterday: character assassination. ... Now that there is a corpse, a shiver runs down one's spine to think that in Berlusconi's unfortunate country the highest price must be paid for so much as cautious criticism or thoughtful disapproval: the end of one's moral and professional life. ... Anyone in Italy who prefers to see nothing and to close their eyes is guilty of complicity with the murderers, and with those who commissioned this character assassination."

» full article (external link, Italian)
More from the press review on the subject » Press freedom, » Italy
All available articles from » Giuseppe d'Avanzo

» To the complete press review of Friday, September 4, 2009