Italy and Media Freedom

[John Simkin]

Freedom House has just published a report on press and TV freedoms. As one would expect, European countries dominate the top rankings. However, one disturbing aspect is the position of Italy. It is ranked 74th (just below Benin and Mali). The report condemns Italy for “unbalanced” coverage of political events and says that it no better than Albania and Mongolia in terms of media independence. The report the decline in the quality of media coverage is linked to the rule of Silvio Berlusconi.

I would be very interested to hear from Italian members about this. Do you think this report should be so critical of the Italian media?

The EU insists that member countries should have democratically elected governments. Should they also insist that ruling governments should not have the kind of media power which determines people’s political opinions. After all, this is what the EU used to rightly criticise communist governments in Eastern Europe of doing.

For further details see:

http://www.freedomhouse.org/research/pressurvey.htm

[Derek McMillan]

There is a new film entitled "Outfoxed" directed by Robert Greenwald which highlights the bias of the Fox network. It has interviews with former Fox employees and chapter and verse indicating how the Fox network has slanted the news to favour Bush in the US.

Curiously this one is not being made available in British cinemas and not screened by Sky AFAIK. I wonder why that would be

It is poss to obtain it on DVD though and perhaps the BBC or Channel 4 will screen it at some time. I hope so.

There is a webpage http://www.outfoxed.org/

There is a blog providing daily examples of Fox News bias http://www.newshounds.us/

And last but not least there is Doonesbury http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/...l_date=20040719