About Italian Journalism. Today was an important day for italian factory workers trade union FIOM, since they gathered in Rome to demonstrate against, among other issues, the italian world wide known company FIAT is not employng workers subscribed to FIOM trade union.

This kind of behaviours are legal in a democracy?

Italian Constitution would attest no.

But who cares, there’s an economic crisis going on, we have priorities.

In the meanwhile during the last weeks a very cruel and indecent journalistic campaign (mainstream media such as televisions, newspapers, magazines) tried to demonize the rising simpathy of italian population for NoTAV movement (more info here) by covering the huge growth of police state in Val di Susa (north of Italy, near Turin… where FIAT was born).

Today Repubblica, a newspaper which claims to be left oriented, mixed up the pacific demonstration held by FIOM trade union in Rome with another demonstration where Movimento per la casa (literally the movement for the house) tried to peacefully occupy a square in front of CIPE (a governmental organization dealing with economic planning), where some persons were brutally pulled away by some persons in plain clothes, who, we should assume, were policemen (watching the video is incredibly difficult to understand what is going on, since it seems civilians are pulling other civilians for no reason….!)

So, the best a journalist working at Repubblica.it (one of the most popular italian newspaper) can do is to mix up two different stories assuming that indignation is everywhere, people occupy anything they can and in this way every single issue brought by different people in different ways and different time and space become a big general chaos. A night in which all cows are black.

This is not journalism.

This is incompetence or… conscious strumentalization.

…

E andando nel sole che abbaglia
sentire con triste meraviglia
com’è tutta la vita e il suo travaglio
in questo seguitare una muraglia
che ha in cima cocci aguzzi di bottiglia.

(Eugenio Montale, Meriggiare pallido e assorto, ~1916)

photo: mine :)

Cosmonauta (Susanna Nicchiarelli, 2009)