Albanese (National Italian Press Federation Fnsi): journalism performs a social role

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Michele Albanese, the Calabrian reporter who lives under police escort thanked Ossigeno for its work. Then came the sting in the tail for the Government: no cuts to publishing.

“Too many powers today, in Italy and in the world, want journalism to abandon its rôle as a social and cultural mediator”: declared the Calabrian journalist Michele Albanese, speaking as a representative of the FNSI, at the conference “Journalists assaulted, guilty unpunished”, organized by Ossigeno – under the patronage of UNESCO – in the Italian Senate on October 22nd, 2018 to celebrate the UN World Day to put an end to impunity for crimes against journalists.

Albanese thanked the Observatory for its activities. And then, commenting on the data on threatened journalists and on the impunity for those who hinder the work of reporters, he spoke of his on-going situation as a journalist under police guard for four years who does everything to continue doing his job. “Those who end up under attack must learn to live with all this,” he said.

Albanese recalled the need for journalism to be independent from all kinds of power, capable of “analyzing reality in an independent way”. Then he expressed his opinion on some recent measures announced by the government regarding the publishing sector. He agreed with Undersecretary Crimi as regards the need to provide journalists with adequate fair compensation but opposed the Government’s intention to cut funding to publishers because the provision would suffocate “the life of small local newspapers “.

RDM