In Italy we’ve been discussing for a long time about the Gag-Law, the “law on wiretaps”, that law which should stop journalists from publishing tapped conversations (if this law was to pass we would barely have wiretaps at all!), the names of the accused people or those of the judges following the various trials, etc.
Basically, every piece of news regarding a crime.
Privacy, even that of criminals, is used as a pretext to limit freedom of the press and the efficiency of the investigations. A clumsy attempt to confuse the citizenship.
Serious Democracies, unlike ours, consider freedom of the press as a fundamental right. Newspapers and journalists have to be watchdogs who don’t limit themselves to repeating the owner’s words.
Take, for example, the USA and Germany.
Americans have manifested their worries about the limitations imposed on the investigations. (North)Americans are worried by the potential impact of this step backwards on the investigations on the Mafia made in Italy (our investigators will be left to making assumptions like Sherlock Holmes).
Even more interesting is the German point of view: there, the Government (centre-right) is worried about the delicate balance between freedom of the press and confidentiality.
The federal government has approved 2 week ago the draft of a law aimed at protecting journalists, in particular when they publish confidential information or pieces of secret investigations.
Whilst in Italy we want to punish journalists and editors, even when they publish news of public domain (such as the names of an accused, or the accusations them), our neighbors want journalists to be free to publish pieces of news that are still secret.
In order to find countries that share “our” Government’s position we need to go far away. The Gag-law finds supporters in China, in a few countries of the Middle East and of Latin America. Even there, however, somebody wouldn’t be too happy about this.
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