Sicily. Story of reporter acquitted after had been sued for talking of Mafia with students

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Ossigeno awarded a money contribution to journalist José Trovato forced to pay legal defence for unfounded allegations

OSSIGENO November 30^th  2024 – The Legal Help Desk of Ossigeno (see here) in collaboration with Media Defence provides free legal aid  to journalists and bloggers in difficulty due to specious legal actions in relation to their work. The Help Desk has now granted a financial contribution to cover the legal costs incurred by the journalist José Trovato, chief editor of the online newspaper EnnaOra.it, who after having spoken about the mafia to students of a school (read here), was hit by two lawsuits that appeared baseless and turned out to be so. In this text, written for Ossigeno, the journalist recounts his experience , similar to that of many Italian journalists who are the target of vexatious lawsuits, SLAPPs and other retaliations for having spoken about taboo subjects or revealed uncomfortable facts.

José Trovato – First of all, I would like to thank Ossigeno per l’Informazione  that helped me to pay the legal costs of a criminal case that was very stressful for me. Now that I have been acquitted, I can tell you about it.

In April 2023, as a journalist and author of investigations into mafia organizations active in the province of Enna, together with the then director of the police station in Nicosia (Sicily), a regional deputy under police escort due to threats from organised crime, I met the students of the Duca d’Aosta Institute in Troina.

There, answering a specific question about the situation of organized crime in a nearby town, I gave the name and surname of a person convicted of mafia offences, because in a tiny town in the province of Enna, one of the most dangerous and bloodthirsty bosses of Cosa Nostra, Giuseppe ‘piddu’ Madonia, lived there in the 1980s and 1990s.

I added more about some public denunciations  resulting from my investigative journalism into mafia infiltration into Enna contracts, without naming names since, as we know, journalists have the task of reconstructing detailed facts (and I detailed them perfectly) but without attributing criminal responsibility, a task that falls to the judicial authority.

I then learned that some students had recorded my speech and in a way that was incomprehensible to me – we should question education on legality and the negative values ​​that are evidently passed on by families – they had played the recording to that man convicted of mafia crimes.

In short, I had to deal with: a threat, about which I cannot say too much because it is the subject of a protective measure for me issued by the Provincial Committee for Public Order and Security; a semi-serious social media post, but full of mafia language, signed by a family member of one of those boys; and with two defamation lawsuits. Two baseless lawsuits from which I had to defend myself and from which, in the end, I was acquitted.

The judge ruled that what I said at the school, during the meeting with the pupils , constitutes “a mere expression of the right to criticize (…) suitable, as such, to attract an understanding and objectively appreciated attention from public opinion”. I thank the lawyer Salvatore Timpanaro for the excellent work done, the Court of Enna which once again demonstrated that it applies the laws in a rigorous and careful manner, and again the Osservatorio di Ossigeno per l’Informazione for the legal protection offered.

Josè Trovato