The International Press Institute (IPI) has recently visited Italy with the aim to explore the digital switchover and the pluralism landscape in the country.

IPI examined the potential challenges to the pluralism of Italy's audiovisual sector resulting from the country's digital switchover, and "suggested that pluralism may be bolstered by the switchover, if the value of pluralism is taken into strong consideration in the establishment of the criteria for the technological move", as the International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) reported.

It was a follow-up visit of a first "Press Freedom Mission" conducted in November 2010 with the purpose of assessing restrictions on press freedom in Italy and other potential obstacles affecting journalists' ability to report freely, independently and without undue pressure, as IPI's website reported.

Concerns were expressed about two different areas: the danger that predominant interests in the audiovisual sector could be further consolidated by the country's digital switchover and the frequent use of civil defamation cases against journalists, together with the request for exorbitant compensatory fines, which both have an effect on news reporting and lead to self-censorship.

Concerns about press freedom and pluralism in Italy are not at all new: the EU Parliament debated the issue and agreed to vote on a resolution in 2009. The 2010 world press freedom index from Reporters Without Borders criticised Italy (and France) for trailing the rest of Western Europe ranking 49th (and 44th) out of the 178 countries rated.

On the issue of pluralism, IPI underlined that in addition to significant delays in the digitalization process, which was expected to be finalized by 2006, the current criteria that determine which audiovisual providers might be able to operate appear to favour the current operators more than opening the market to new ones. "There are serious concerns that the outcome of the tender may consolidate the current duopolistic environment" (the public broadcaster RAI and the private broadcasting network Mediaset owned by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi), IPI stated.

On the issue of pressures on journalists IPI put into lights the excessive use of civil defamation causes that risk to put a brake on freedom of expression as many journalists could be lead to self-censorship behaviours for not fall into costly lawsuits.

A perfect example of this situation was provided by the Italian public broadcaster TV journalist Milena Gabanelli. Political pressures are no more the only menaces that loom over journalists as the freedom of speech is conditioned also by the risk of facing a lawsuit. "Anyone who feels that they have been defamed has the right to sue the journalist or the news outlet involved, of course", she wrote in an article, but it must not simply became a method to crush press freedom.

"Someone with a bulging wallet could have an interest to ask for millions in damages in a civil action suit because in Italy the only risk for him/her is to be forced to pay legal expenses. Only a big publisher can compete against and afford the expenses for the duration of the trials, which in Italy are very long. I have been asked to pay damages of €130 million four years ago under baseless charges and we are still waiting for the sentence to be pronounced."

At the time of writing - it was 2009 - she noted she had 30 lawsuits (due to her investigative TV program Report) open against her and she argued that it's easily understandable how this pressure could play a more powerful role on her job than a mere political pressure. She also noted that the Anglo-Saxon law has the power to condemn people for asking for exorbitant compensatory fines without a good reason, but Italian law doesn't: there is nothing to discourage people from bringing cases against the media.

The picture that comes out from the study "The Press in Italy 2008 - 2010" [La Stampa in Italia] realized by the Italian Federation of Newspapers Publishers (FIEG) is not a lot more positive.

"The main problems that Italian publishers have to face are substantially tied to a market that doesn't sufficiently expand into its two traditional components - copy sales and the advertising market - and to the need of identify different patterns of a proceeds' growth".

As singer Adriano Celentano titled one of his albums, "Sleep my love, the situation is not good" [Dormi amore, la situazione non è buona].

Sources: IFEX, IPI, Corriere della Sera, FIEG