Italy: concentration and intimidation

The Italian media landscape is increasingly under the influence and control of political and economic interest groups. Media concentration is growing while print media circulations have fallen by over 50 percent in the last decade. Against this backdrop, media company takeovers and mergers are a constant topic in Italy. However, this is just as much a result of the relentless struggle for the pole position in shaping public opinion as of the crisis in newspaper circulations.

The front pages of newspapers on 26 September 2022 after the election victory of Giorgia Meloni's Fratelli d'Italia party. (© picture alliance / ROPI/Maule/Fotogramma)

Berlusconi and his imitators

This power struggle has its origins in Berlusconism. Starting in the 1990s, former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who died in 2023, built up an extensive network of media companies. The Berlusconi family empire now encompasses the country’s largest publisher, Mondadori, as well as its three leading commercial television stations, which attract around 60 percent of all advertising investments on the Italian market.

A power struggle has also been raging for years over the country’s largest daily newspaper, the liberal-conservative daily Corriere della Sera. In July 2016, media entrepreneur and Berlusconi protégé Urbano Cairo took over half the stock in the previously independent publishing group RCS, which in addition to Corriere della Sera also owns the leading sports newspaper Corriere dello Sport and several tabloids, men’s magazines and cookery, gardening and travel magazines.

Two other major Italian publishing companies, Gruppo editoriale L'Espresso and Editrice Italiana (Itedi), merged in April 2017 to create Gedi, one of the largest Italian publishing groups, which produces the major daily newspapers La Repubblica and La Stampa, among others. In April 2020 the Dutch investment company Exor acquired additional shares and now holds more than half of Gedi’s stock. Exor is majority-owned by the Italian Agnelli family and is the largest shareholder in car manufacturer Fiat Chrysler and the British media consortium The Economist Group, among others. The new ownership structure led to immediate changes of staff in top positions at several Gedi media outlets.

Entrepreneur and member of parliament for the Lega party Antonio Angelucci should also be mentioned here. He owns the newspapers Il Giornale, Libero and Il Tempo, among other titles. In spring 2024 Angelucci expressed an interest in taking over Italy’s second-largest news agency AGI from the energy group Eni for a purported 40 million euros. However, after strikes by the editorial team and protests from the political opposition who argued that the sale of AGI to a member of the governing coalition could unduly restrict media pluralism, the sale fell through.

Public broadcasters now just government mouthpieces?

Television is still the dominant medium in the Italian media landscape, however, and in this market too, ownership is concentrated in just a few hands: alongside the public broadcaster RAI and Berlusconi’s Media for Europe (Mediaset until 2021) the third major player is the commercial broadcaster La7, which the abovementioned entrpreneur Urbano Cairo has owned since 2013.

But according to media NGOs and European newspapers from across the political spectrum, the interventions by the Meloni government go well beyond the usual levels. Critical programmes have either been cancelled or not renewed. For example, a new season of the research format Insider by anti-mafia author Roberto Saviano which had already been produced was cancelled even though the previous seasons had very good ratings. Author Antonio Scurati, who had been invited to mark the anniversary of Italy’s liberation from fascism on 25 April 2024 by reading a commissioned text on public television in which he accused Giorgia Meloni of failing to distance herself from her “post-fascist past”, was uninvited at short notice. Around three-quarters of RAI’s journalists went on strike for 24 hours in protest. And when, in the run-up to the 2024 European elections, Meloni and her Fratelli d'Italia tried to undermine the legal principle according to which all parties receive the same amount of airtime during the election campaign by stipulating that announcements by members of the government were not to be counted as airtime, this drew widespread protests even from members of the government camp, and in the end the measure was postponed. As a result of these developments, a number of RAI’s most prominent journalists, including Lucia Annunziata and talk show hosts Amadeus and Fabio Fazio, have left the broadcaster, and its viewing figures have since dipped significantly.

Violence and lawsuits against journalists

That press freedom in Italy is not fundamentally in danger, but is nevertheless being undermined, is the result of another factor: intimidation. Around two dozen journalists in Italy live under constant police protection. It is not only the mafia that uses brutal intimidation methods against journalists like best-selling author Roberto Saviano; since 2017 right-wing extremist groups have also resorted to violence in an attempt to prevent free reporting. Among the journalists under threat are Paolo Berizzi from La Repubblica and Nello Svaco from Avvenire.

Last but not least, Italy is one of several European countries where journalists regularly face SLAPP lawsuits (Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) – abusive lawsuits brought by influential representatives from business, politics and the judiciary to harass, intimidate and financially and psychologically exhaust the opponent. According to a study by the European Parliament for the period 2022-2023, more than a quarter of all EU-wide SLAPP lawsuits were filed in Italy. In addition to Roberto Saviano, Marco Travaglio, editor-in-chief of Il Fatto Quotidiano, and Federica Angeli have been the most frequent targets of such lawsuits: the latter, a justice and mafia specialist who works for La Repubblica, has been charged with defamation no fewer than 167 times (as of 2021). Such lawsuits generally have no chance of standing up in court: less than ten percent actually go to trial and around two-thirds are not even admitted. In many cases things go no further than a public threat. And yet this type of attempt at intimidation can also lead to self-censorship, as Reporters Without Borders warns – particularly because defamation is treated as a criminal offence in Italy and, in addition to heavy fines, offenders can be sentenced to up to six years in prison for defamation in the press – a legal relic of the fascist Mussolini dictatorship. The EU has repeatedly criticised that this state of affairs fails to meet European standards for the protection of journalists in its rule of law reports, and the Italian Constitutional Court already called for a reform of the legislation in 2021, but the governing parties in parliament have yet to address this.

With the election of Giorgia Meloni as Prime Minister, the topic has become even more contentious: Meloni, Defence Minister Guido Crosetto and Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Matteo Salvini are among those politicians who have themselves filed SLAPP lawsuits against journalists. How Italy will implement the EU’s anti-SLAPP directive, which was adopted in April 2024, remains to be seen.

World Press Freedom Index (Reporters Without Borders):
Rank 46 (2024)
Last updated: August 2024

Italy: concentration and intimidation

Media from Italy at euro|topics

Avvenire (Daily newspaper)

Blog Alan Friedman (Blog)

Corriere della Sera (Daily newspaper)

HuffPost Italia (Website)

Il Fatto Quotidiano (Daily newspaper)

Il Foglio Quotidiano (Daily newspaper)

Il Giornale (Daily newspaper)

Il Manifesto (Daily newspaper)

Il Sole 24 Ore (Daily newspaper)

Panorama (Magazine)

La Repubblica (Daily newspaper)

La Stampa (Daily newspaper)

La Voce (Website)

L'Espresso (Magazine)

Il Post (Website)

MicroMega (Monthly magazine)

Dire (Website)

Formiche.net (Website)