The state of freedom of the media

proposals for policy reform

by Enzo Marzo

English translation by Cristina Di Battista

Index:

1 TO BE AWARE THAT THE MEDIA ARE NOT FREE

2 THERE IS NO DEMOCRACY WITHOUT INDEPENDENT INFORMATION

3 PUBLIC OPINION AND PROPAGANDA

4 THE RELEVANCE AND THE REVOLUTION OF THE NEW MEDIA

5 CITIZENS, READERS,CONSUMERS

6 THE CONFORMIST SWAMP

7 FIVE CRITERIA FOR MEDIA REFORM

8 FROM THE THREE POWERS OF THE STATE TO THE THREE POWERS OF

THE "PUBLIC SPHERE": A NEW SEPARATISM

9 THE NEUTRAL STATE’S ROLE AS GUARANTOR

10 A MODEL FOR FREEDOM OF INFORMATION. PREMISE

11 THE PUBLIC RELEVANCEOF INFORMATION

12 PROBLEMS WITH THIS MODEL AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

13 PLAN B: ON ONE'S OWN INITIATIVE

14 THE RIGHTS OF READERS AND THE GUILD OF JOURNALISTS

15 CONCLUSIONS. THE BIRTH OF THE "PANNUNZIO SOCIETY FOR THE

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION"

1. to be aware that the
media are not free
Freedom of information, to some extent, is
guaranteed by constitutions and laws. The
media, with their networks that encircle the
globe, declare themselves free, but
everywhere they are in chains. The bonds, of
course, are increasingly virtual, invisible,
binding minds and directing them. A very
long struggle has guaranteed, officially, the
freedom to inform: Today in industrialized
countries one can print, broadcast, transmit
signals, sounds, and messages. All (almost)
freely. The freedom of the media is (almost)
legally guaranteed, often subsidized. And so
the world of symbols has superimposed itself
on the real world, covering it, reshaping it if
not replacing it.
The new era is under the aegis of information.
The profusion of information tools is
impressive – even excessive, some fear.
However, if each segment of this cluster is
tainted because it is not free, the Whole is
transformed into a nightmare of conformity
and unfreedom. Public opinion is praised as
paramount and omnipotent, but in fact it is
manipulated, other-directed, weakened. The
means of communicating are inexorably and
gradually becoming concentrated.
Everywhere there reign, if not monopolies,
then oligopolies and expensive, elephantine
structures, unreachable by ideological
minorities. The reader, the viewer and the
listener, who appear everywhere to be
protagonists, are actually reduced to
unknowing objects. They have no rights. The
fruits of the hard-won freedom of the media
are disheartening. The viewer-readers defend
themselves as best they can and regress:
gradually abandoning the “most difficult”
instruments and succumbing to the “easiest”.
People go less and less to the newsstand to
buy the daily newspaper and instead lie in
front of the TV assimilating dubious
1
television news that overlaps in the mind in a
jumble of serial dramas and news.
Today, in Italy, in the age of Berlusconi, the
state of the television media has undergone a
true collapse: it has been transformed from an
oligopoly to a near-perfect monopoly. Direct
control of almost all private TV, as well as
indirect control of public TV, ownership of
production formats, domination of the
advertising market, a dominant position in
publishing and among market research
institutions, are all in addition to the public
power, and sustain it, contaminating the
formation of a political will and tampering
with the basic requirements of any
democracy. In the game of politics,
Berlusconi is openly cheating, and by warping
the political struggle at every stage until
election day, he reduces democracy to little or
nothing. Almost all his opponents either have
a culture of democracy so meager that they do
not perceive this danger or, in their indolence,
become his accomplices.
The cancer that has befallen us
cannot lead us to forget, however, that
information anywhere—even in so-called
“normal” conditions—represents the first and
most serious problem of our democracies.
2. there is no democracy
without independent
information
According to Robert A. Dahl, of the five
criteria that distinguish an ideal democracy
three regard the media: 1) effective
participation (“before a policy is adopted [...],
all the members must have equal and effective
opportunities for making their views known
to the other members”), 2) the right to
information (“within reasonable limits as to
time, each member must have equal and
effective opportunities for learning about the
relevant alternative policies and their likely
consequences”), 3) control of the agenda.
Others have argued that “offering
opportunities to attain a clear understanding
of public issues is not only part of the
definition of democracy, it is a fundamental
requirement of democracy”i. If by democracy
we mean more than a form of government, the
minimum requirements are “freedom of
expression” and the possibility of “access to
alternative sources of information.” Of
course, many totalitarian states thrive, but can
the so-called western democracies continue to
call themselves democracies without pursuing
at least those minimum requirements that we
ourselves consider necessary? Can we still
call ourselves democratic if we do not reclaim
the observations and prescriptions of
liberalism, and instead continue to trust in a
political system that increasingly has became
an empty shell? We are far from “the
democracy of a civil society.” If the masses
do not have proper and multiple tools to form
an appropriate idea of the current political
agenda, their transformation into a “civil
society”—able to verify and evaluate
constantly the work of government and of the
political forces that contend to do this work—
will be increasingly illusory.
We are experiencing the failure of
constitutional democracy, that is, of the
democracy of rules. Now the game is visibly
rigged both by the manipulation of public
opinion and by the limited and predetermined
options of the individual voter. Today's
citizen-voter—who, increasingly, is
convinced that the most forceful way to
express a political choice is by not going to
the polls—must realize that before being a
voter he is (and must become) a mindful
reader, with a recognized right to know and a
right to transparency, and not a consumer of
media, easy prey to propaganda and
manipulation. We fought so hard to ensure
free elections; we must begin to fight—as
Italian political scientist Giovanni Sartori
argues—so that opinions are free, “that is,
freely formed” ii.
Today, however, the media are
identified with their holdings. And no one
believes that the newspapers are the
2
mouthpiece for public opinion when they
serve only as a tool to deform it.
3. public opinion and
propaganda
Although all Propaganda is (somewhat
forced) Persuasion, not all Persuasion is
Propaganda. If alongside these two we add
Testimony, which is the only modus operandi
of authentic journalism, we have three
contiguous concepts, with large areas of
overlap in many cases and the tendency to
absorb into one another. The most colossal
mistake is to define Persuasion and
Propaganda as positive or negative from their
content or their purpose, or because of their
principal characteristics, such as the
intentional manipulation of the propagandist,
or their simplicity, or rather, simplistic nature,
or their repetitiveness.
Propaganda is not distinguished from
persuasion by its "conveyed" content nor by
the "intentions" of the communicator, nor by
the techniques used, but rather by the quantity
of information that floods people's minds
without their having sufficient alternatives.
Propaganda does not accept being
contradicted. The only antidote to propaganda
is plurality of sources. We thus return to the
primary importance of the division of media
power at a time when it is impossible even to
have reliable data on the process of
consolidation of the media, which is
happening at such a frenetic pace.
Information in the hands of a single entity
leads to perfect propaganda, but this
monopoly is not the exclusive domain of
totalitarian states. Democratic states, at
certain times in their history, have also built
monopolistic systems to promote
propagandistic themes that were particularly
dear to their executives.
Even in periods of so-called "normalcy" it is
not necessary for the government to officially
establish a monopoly; often it is the whole
informational apparatus that self-adjusts and
becomes uniform.
What's more, there is also the
different "weight" of the various information
media: unfortunately there is not only a
monopolistic trend within each medium, but
also the excessive dominance of one medium,
such as TV, on all the others, with the result
that it absorbs the individual's attention
almost entirely and leaves no critical
alternatives.
4. the relevance and the
revolution of the new
media
Digital technology brings together the three
systems of signs that make up
communication: the written word, sound and
the image. Since all three signs are
disseminated by one means (bits), the merger
of these media is inevitable. So far, nothing
has been done to govern this process. At the
same time, how can we fail to notice or fail to
come to terms with the change in our concept
of goods? “In place of markets there are
networks," writes Jeremy Rifkin iii. In the new
type of market is that the network, property
and goods break down. Above all, the “new
masters” of the media do not sell material
goods but mainly “experience flows,”
experience of text, sounds and images. With
the "goods" becoming intangible, the term
"property," referring to a physical transfer
from one subject to another, suddenly
becomes obsolete and destined to regulate
only “residual” relations.
But in this case what is the most effective
anti-merger policy, assuming that there is an
authority capable of devising one and enforce
it? Perhaps it is unhistorical and unscientific
to have an antitrust policy that attacks this
type of vertical integration, that is, a policy
that tends to separate the different forms that
make up experience. It is impossible to
3
separate the diffusion of sound from the
diffusion of the image. It is impossible to
break up the "experience flows" or even resist
the process of integration. All efforts should
be directed instead at antitrust policies of a
horizontal type, that is, those that while
acknowledging the oneness of the
informational experience, limit its quantity to
minimum thresholds and do this so strictly as
to stimulate an increase in the number of
producers and therefore in the sources of
information, creating a market in which
competition is as effective as possible.
Both the Left and the Right, and not only in
Italy, lack a consistent policy on freedom of
communication. They continue to reason with
the old logic of the contrast between the
public and the private. Those on the Right
confuse "freedom" with “Absolutely hands-
free”, even if this leads to concentration of
information and opacity, and they tend to use
this particular "commodity" (information) for
blatantly irrelevant purposes. Those on the
Right confuse the market with the absolute
absence of rules. Inconsistent with the ideas
they profess, they aim at low or no level of
competition and, at the same time, at
substantial public funding. The Left still
champion the ancient conviction, disproved
by the facts, that pluralism can be maintained
by the public sector. As if the public sector
were neutral and not the "actor" making a
variety of choices and representing its own
self-interest. As if objective information could
exist. As if the problem were ensuring this
objectivity. As if it were enough to release the
media from the "private" sector to elevate
them as the exclusive font of who knows what
Truth that would be otherwise distorted by
self-interest and partisan choices. As if the
news were not always “partisan.” The Left
with Communist origins does not know how
to respond to these questions and in the end
“public” boils down to mean the coarse
lottazzazione, the partitioning of posts in state
conglomerates among trusted party members.
When will the Left understand that the task of
the state is not to provide news that is passed
off as objective, but to ensure the effective
diversity of information sources? Moving
from lottizzazione to pluralism means
changing one's own philosophy of history.
The idea that all forms of communication are
controlled by of a handful of oligopolists (just
think that no more than ten portals manage
80% of the hundreds of millions of daily page
hits on the Internet) is frightening, but on the
other hand the idea that the State (dictatorial
or otherwise) should manage such an
enormous power is no consolation. The Net is
now a giant producer of freedom, but it has
feet of clay. If the state is weak, public
choices are easy prey for economic power; if
the State assumes tasks beyond its scope, it
has a crushing impact on the freedom of its
citizens. There is no decent solution except an
acquisition of real autonomy and a limitation
on the "political" power. Today, politics, too
often reduced to a mere operating tool of
private power, appears increasingly like a
corrupt and complacent arbiter.
The State cannot manage any type of
mass media. The State must underscore its
neutrality and ensure the effective plurality of
information, as the sole guarantor of an
untainted democratic process.
5. citizens, readers,
consumers
Freedom of information and the “right to be
informed” are two different but
complementary values, and pitting them
against each other is asking for trouble. Both
are to be guaranteed.
First, we have included the "right to be
informed" among the essential conditions for
a democracy that is not false. But the freedom
to inform is a prerequisite of (because it is
fundamental to) this very right. In the same
way, freedom itself includes equality, and not
vice versa. It is an absolute good (though,
paradoxically, many journalists argue the
opposite), not may be tied to certain
functions. And then who should determine
4
these "functions" The State? The Party? The
Church?
The three foremost qualities, "objectivity",
"impartiality" and "completeness", that
abound in the legislation on journalism and in
codes of ethics, have not helped to advance
the quality and the freedom of information.
The journalist does not perform, and should
not perform, any function other than that of a
witness to reality, his task is to "report it" as
seen and perceived, without laboring under
the illusion of being free from subjectiveness
and from the uncertainties inherent in any
witness. In the past, unrealistic and
unproductive theses have been put forth on
the social mission of the journalist, even at the
expense of news. Meanwhile, more subtly, in
the mind of the journalist there has remained
firm the mission to defend the interests of the
Ownership. Well-informed citizen-readers
know that saddling the journalist with
additional functions opens a debate on the
“right/duty to news" and does not improve the
readability and accuracy of our newspapers.
Rather than fighting a war among
“rags,” “the right to news” and “the freedom
to be informed" should ally themselves and
become aware that one cannot exist without
the other. And above all, we must establish,
almost from nothing, a “right of readers,” who
are currently unprotected both as citizens
(they are guaranteed neither the plurality nor
the independence of information) and as
consumers (it is not even taken into
consideration that as buyers of a product they
are "consumers" and therefore they should at
least acquire rights analogous to those of
buyers of any other consumer good, as
regards transparency, the absence of
intermingled interests, and the absence of
pollution of the news.
6. the conformist swamp
Article 21 of Italy's Constitution on the
freedom of the press is a fine example of
liberalism. Very rigid, and Cavourian [editor's
note: Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, one of
the founders of Italy, always believed it was
better not to legislate the information sector],
it suggests that, in this field, less legislation is
better than more. But unfortunately, there has
been more legislation, and there are many
ordinary laws that contradict the spirit of the
constitutional principle. Some of these rules
openly violate its letter (for example, the
requirement to register newspaper titles in the
courts).Others create obstacles and
redundancies. But there is also a "positive
freedom” that must be ensured but that is not
ensured. The Italian Constitution has not
forgotten about it, and Article 3, despite its
general nature, responds well to the purpose.
Article 3 establishes the duty of the Republic
to remove economic and social obstacles that,
by limiting the freedom and equality of
citizens, prevent the full development of the
human character. From here springs the duty
of the legislator to work effectively to ensure
that all have the concrete opportunity to
express themselves freely.
"Functionalism", the theory which
automatically assigns to journalism an
extraneous function, having lost the battle
with Article 21, has wanted to vindicate itself
in the decades that followed. The ordinary
legislation seems to be influenced by the
substantially illiberal spirit of the times rather
than by Article 21, and reached its climax
both with the famous 1984 sentence of the
Corte di Cassazione [editor's note: Italy's
supreme court of appeal] and with the entire
season of the cries for ethics which, not
surprisingly, opens the darkest period of
Italian journalism, still ongoing. We have thus
arrived at the current situation, the worst, in
which predominate, cloaked in rhetoric,
perverse, tangled relations between legislation
that disowns or restricts accepted principles
and legislation that has fallen into disuse, or
was never applied; between uncritical
exultation of "public service" (where the
inevitable political conditioning and
corresponding servility have become even
vulgar) and the unconditional surrender to
5
private monopoly; between insecure contracts
and weak unions.
Journalists are drowning in the
swamp of irrelevance and conformity. But
publishers too, especially those of the “printed
press,” out of ignorance and gluttony, act for
their own interests. The inexorable decline in
sales, an increasingly insignificant function in
the face of more modern communication
tools, a feudalistic internal organization, are
plain to see, but nobody seems to see and to
be aware of it. We are content to serve as a
vehicle, no longer for our own ideas and
information, but for books and various
knickknacks. The result? The massive
distortion of the message, the evident
intermingling - if not the outright
subordination - of the editorial text and
advertising, the unawareness of our own role.
Hence there has been a drastic reduction in
the authority of the media and the reliability
of journalists. The competition between "the
printed press" and information on the Internet
is seen as inevitable only by those who forget
the importance given to the means of
communication in connection with the
message to be transmitted, and that the
various means of communication play
different roles and are irreplaceable. The
contest between the two means of
communication has a predictable outcome
only if the current traditional media act
without any ability for self-transformation,
and without a strong emphasis on their
independence, their distinctiveness, and the
irreplaceable value of professional journalism.
The blindness of editorial managers is evident
and it will lead to an unconditional surrender,
with severe damage to the entire legacy of
information dissemination.
7. five criteria for media
reform
Among the current “democratic emergencies”
we must include a genuine reform, legislative
and otherwise, that builds the structural
conditions both to ensure freedom of
information and to establish the rights of
reader-consumers.
To be effective, the reform should pursue five
criteria:
1. to confirm that free information is of
primary importance to the public interest,
as a necessary component for the
existence of a political democracy.
2. to establish that the freedom to inform
cannot be guaranteed except by an
effective plurality of sources.
3. to maximize the separation between the
powers of the "public sphere," which goes
beyond the obvious separation of state
powers.
4. to recognize that the commodity of
"information" has a different status than
that of a mere commercial good, and thus
to build an exclusive and unique form of
governance for publishing companies.
5. to consider as fundamental the presence of
the reader-consumer among the
protagonists of the information process.
8. from the three powers
of the state to the three
powers of the "public
sphere": a new
separatism
Liberalism has invented a principle that is
revolutionary because it is based on the
realization of the inevitability of power and of
the need to divide it; now the task is to extend
this theory to the entire "public sphere," of
which the state's power is but one part, and
perhaps the increasingly less relevant one.
Only power can inhibit the perverse effects of
power. If one considers the state's power as a
whole including all the classic functions and
also those that have been added, such as
administrative power, or that expressed by the
6
political will of parties, one can imagine in
modern societies the total “public sphere,”
consisting precisely of the state apparatus,
the economic power and the power of the
media.
In this sense the “public sphere” is identified
instead with the polis, as a place where
relations and exchanges of citizens' actions
are entwined. By chance, we have another
three-way division of real powers that find
strength in each other. But the liberal
principle of separatism is largely upset: so,
rather than the legitimate and desirable
conflict between the powers we witness a
continuous effort of each power to limit the
autonomy of the others and to weaken mutual
competition. The main factor that reinforces
the downward spiral in this division is that all
three powers are off their rails.
Societies that like to call themselves
democratic must finally acknowledge that
they lack - in substance and in form - that
"separation of powers" that was once at the
root of all liberal thought. That is why the
current situation is mostly a return to the pre-
modern state.
The media has enormous strength, but does
not possess any degree of autonomy; it is
fully reined in, and the reins are in the hands
of the economy and/or politics.
Political power has lost large shares of its
autonomy because it has been unable to
conclusively resolve the problem of its own
financial autonomy and of the constraints
involved. Moreover, the politician is tightly in
the grip of the close connection between
economic power and media power.
That same economic power is strongly
influenced by the choices of public policies.
The reciprocal overstepping of boundaries is
common. The "political" verges into
communication: it sacks and enslaves
television, takes possession of news agencies
- until recently, the state even managed a
daily newspaper. Political power exerts
constant pressure and blackmail on owners of
newspapers. For their part, communications
entrepreneurs have always considered the
economic return an extra compared to the
gain that they derive from their power to use
the media to do more than inform. Even the
economic players that do not directly possess
means of communication control and divide
among themselves that "extra" by influencing
the advertising budgets. Sometimes, they
proclaim so shamelessly.
If the principle of the separation of
these three powers were recognized and
pursued in the practice of politics, the leap in
the quality of democracy would be enormous.
But first, it would be necessary to make
public knowledge the damage brought about
by the terrible distortion of information
caused by the dependence of political forces
on licit and illicit funding from the economic
apparatus, the damage created by other-
directed information, and the damage to the
market created by political bureaucracy and
public financing.
9. the neutral state’s role
as guarantor
Even the most obsessive liberal knows that
economic freedom cannot be in contrast with
freedom tout court, and if it were, it should
step aside.
If the right to information were only
a social right, it would not prevail over
economic freedom. If, instead, the freedom of
citizens is questioned – such as in the case of
media distorted by interest other than their
own – it is a constitutional duty to an open a
specific market, stripping it of many plainly
economic aspects and designing a statute that
fully guarantees, and renders autonomous and
transparent, precisely this surplus of power.
Information must put in parentheses its status
as a commodity in order to enhance its status
as a specific good. The intervention of
political authority is more than legitimate,
because it does not go against free enterprise
or free expression. The legal and economic
doctrine provides for the legitimacy of
7
"prohibitive rules": "Property, under
prohibitive rules, shall be made non
commercial, and as such, not subject to trade
on the market. The subject can present shades
and gradations. [...] Here it is useful to note
that commercialism, that is, the destination of
exchange, it is not a natural character of the
property, but always only a legal character”iv.
All these arguments show that it is possible to
intervene, even drastically, with proposals
that remain within the logic of private
enterprise and the free market. In fact, it is
completely foreign to us, and truly ludicrous,
the idea of the State as the guarantor, or even
the operator, of a presumed objectivity or
neutrality of information, according to an
anti-subjective logic that has already inflicted
so much damage.
10. a model for freedom
of information. premise
Our model provides, for major publishing
companies, competition between private
entities (not polluted by any public
representative) within the market. But this is
competition between particular "individuals”
subjected to specific constraints that pursue
the goal of avoiding the influence of both the
other two powers.
How can a model of ownership and
management of communications firms, that is
radically different from the current model and
wholly inspired by the separation between
economic power and media power, establish
itself?
Some, overestimating the irrepressible
industrial and economic character that that is
an integral part of every communications
business, might find this reform plan
completely utopian, although they may agree,
in theory, with its underlying objective. Yet
this is a possible utopia. No one doubts an
industrial component in the mass media, but
there is a need to emphasize the unique nature
of the media business and to differentiate its
business model from those of other industries
because its production aim and profit aim are
absolutely secondary to the comprehensive
public purpose of a type of enterprise which,
by its nature, is unique. Of course it is
difficult. It clashes with a concentration of
interests that have no equal, but the world of
politics, if it wishes to save its legitimate
power - tied to its role - and in the end some
kind of function, one day will have to
understand that instead of occasionally
descending into bargaining, blackmail and
non-transparent influence, it will have to
pursue a coherent policy of “separation" that
can bring a liberal order to the entire “public
sphere”. There is no market that does not have
a strong tendency toward monopoly, but
capitalistic countries demonstrate their greater
or lesser ability to develop in the greater or
lesser resistance they offer against
concentrations of power, and in affirming
rules that give order to industrial democracy.
We believe that placing the
liberalization of the media on the agenda will
be welcomed by voter-readers to the point
that any economic losses (of which there
would be none) would be of minor
importance, as usually happens with major
reforms. All the critics from within the
capitalist system have never stopped
preaching against economic concentrations; in
fact, the more they
adhere to liberal theories, the more they fight
for antitrust laws. Only in Italy
flourish a strange species of economists and
politicians who claim to be liberal but take
sides of with the monopoly. If the United
States, the home of the most mature form of
capitalism in the world, for example, can pose
and try to solve the problem of separation
between finance and industry, then the
eighteenth-century liberal separatist principle
still "works" as the cornerstone for any policy
that takes on the issue of power. Today,
unfortunately, there are few voices crying out
against a concentration of power (the sum of
economic and media power) that in the world
has led to the death of all free expression. Yet
we are far beyond the “immense power”
denounced by the New Deal.
8
11. the public relevance
of information
The revolution of the separation of economic
power from media power can be guaranteed
only by the "publicizing of media enterprises”
where "publicizing" does not mean “giving
publicity to” or “rendering unto the State", but
rather, recognizing the public relevance (not
function, mind you) of information. The free
contribution to the formation of public
opinion must be considered, not only in
manuals but in practice, fundamental and a
necessary element that defines any
democracy.
A warning is necessary: certainly we are
pursing a freer formation of public opinion,
but at the same time we fear, along with
Alexis de Tocqueville, "the tyranny of public
opinion” as it has never occurred to us that
that the opinion of the many is inherently
more valuable than that of the few. Our goal
is reform. We would like for public opinion,
not to be mythologized, but to have more
critical instruments and to be less a victim and
less affected by external interests. Only this,
but this is no small thing.
All that is necessary is for the media industry
to be truly removed from the exchange of
goods and the for the elimination of any
economic control on the media industry. Here
we propose a model that responds to the
principle that the ownership of a newspaper
must belong to those who work on it and those
who read it.
The solution of the formula of a public
company, which has been proposed a number
of times, is absolutely the worst because its
characteristic element is that control is
contestable. A newspaper (or any other form
of media) thrown into the market and quoted
on the stock exchange suffers from all the
disadvantages of having a sole owner, and in
addition, it faces disadvantages due to greater
instability and lower transparency of the
ownership.
The separation is accomplished with
the formation of "pseudo-public companies,"
that is, companies without large shareholders
and not subject to takeover by the shareholder
base. The pseudo-public company is defined
as "a model in which, as in the public
company, control is exercised by an
individual who has a limited share or no share
of the capital and ownership is widespread,
but, unlike the public company, the pseudo-
public company does not allow for turnover
of control against the wishes of those who
exercise it”v. The example in this regard used
in the specialized literature is that of the three
German Grossbanken (Deutsche Bank,
Dresdner Bank and Commerz Bank), in which
control is exercised by management. These
banks qualify, as we have seen, because of the
incontestable nature of their corporate control.
12. problems with this
model and possible
solutions
By adopting this model of liberalization, the
political will to reform would work against
players (the current owners) who are strongly
opposed and resolved to reject what they
would depict as an outright expropriation. But
expropriation it is not, because the
transformation into a pseudo-public company
should serve to guarantee the current
economic value of the commodity. The public
“hand”, interested in re-balancing the powers
and establishing true freedom of expression,
can influence, limit, and place conditions in
many ways. It should gradually begin a
process openly aimed not at acquiring the
good for itself but at the gradual creation of
private companies that are increasingly self-
referential. The main tool is antitrust
legislation.
9
The first measure, and the most important
one, limits current owners in the entire media
industry (print, television, other forms of
communication) to possessing a single
example of each type of media: one
newspaper, one TV network, one Internet
portal, etc. This measure aims not to quash
the synergies that are established between
different areas, but it prevents the formation
of dominant positions within each field. The
excess should be sold in forms and ways
provided for by law.
The second measure introduces the
requirement of a listing on the stock
exchange. We should ask ourselves: in a
typical marketplace, how would a product that
is clearly oriented to goals other than
economic exchange be received? Knowing
the goal (the pseudo-public company) would
discourage neither the participation of the
shareholder base nor the intervention of
institutional investors (insurance companies,
mutual funds and pension funds). The first
group, the shareholders, while knowing that
their role is only nominal and that they cannot
exercise corporate control, could be even
more attracted by a final structure that, by
making the publishing company truly "pure"
(or less "impure"), would be more secure than
the unpredictable politics and the
unscrupulous exploits of an industry leader.
The consequence, inevitably, is greater value
of the good. For the second group, the
institutional investors, the literature is
reassuring, because it supports the fact that
the presence (even the prospect) of a fixed
and predetermined control does not sway the
options for institutional investors, as "the
profile of voting by institutional investors has
often been considered quite secondary
because, according to widespread belief, they
(since they are concerned only with
maximizing the value of their securities and
hold highly diversified portfolios) are not
interested in intervening in the management
of enterprises, but only in assessing the
evolution of the management from the outside
and the exchange rate of securities and
possibly, in divesting their participation.”
The third measure: placing limits on stock
ownership. This rule was critical for
privatization in Italy, as it is for any policy in
support of public companies: "Setting a
maximum threshold of holdings for individual
shareholders aims to prevent a stable
acquisition of control by a single individual or
group of shareholders, linked by shareholders'
agreements or business alliances (witnessed
by the existence of a pact in third companies),
each of which remains below the threshold.
The goal is to shatter the shareholder base on
the assumption that the absence of large
shareholders is a prerequisite for the
development of a public company.”vi. We
recall that the government program of
reorganization of public investment of 1992
also indicated that the formation of a diffuse
shareholder base was one of the main
objectives of the privatization procedures.
Another, far bolder restriction is prohibiting
media company shareholders with a
substantial number of shares from owning
significant shares in any other company of
any kind. And, of course, prohibiting any
form of cross-ownership. This step does not
aim to create a "pure" editor i.e., one not
engaged in industrial action in other fields
(such a figure we would consider false, and in
any case, useless). The measure would have a
deterrent value, to encourage abandonment of
the concept of domination from the entire
media sector.
After these three measures, the phase of
“destroying” the current system gives way to
a phase of "constructing" the new system.
To sum up: the model new media company
may have only one product in each medium
of communication; its corporate structure is
that of a pseudo-public company; it shares
some features of the public company, such as
a listing on the stock exchange and the goal of
a widespread shareholder base; it is managed
on the corporate side by management and on
the editorial side by journalists, however, it
differs from a public company because its
management is self-referential (in the sense
that responds only to investors for financial
matters and to readers for editorial matters), it
10
is incontestable and not subject to large
shareholders. The model must preserve also,
in the initial phase of implementation, that
which is defined as "efficient disposal" and,
therefore, we must strive to "maximize the
profits of the selling shareholder", who must
be justly compensated for gradually
relinquishing the commodity. Perhaps the
decrease in value usually caused by a rather
high degree of constraint in the sale would be
relieved by a gradual nature of the whole
operation. And then, how can we exclude
even an extremely positive effect unleashed
by the newness and the increased value of the
good due to the new structure, which may be
of even greater interest to public
shareholders? Working within these
parameters, we can recover the ability to
distribute to the management and
professionals of the new liberalized company
a minimal quota of shares that can form a
stable nucleus that is incontestable and non-
transferable.
It goes without saying that, next to this model,
valid for large publishing firms, there should
co-exist different framework-formulas for the
various types mass media and their various
corporate sizes, with each framework inspired
by the five general criteria stated earlier.
As with traditional public companies, the new
media company must meet certain
"framework" requirements and abide by a
statute capable of ensuring, to readers and to
the shareholders, efficiency and true
independence. The Board of Directors,
constituting the stable nucleus, therefore,
representative of management and workers on
the one hand, and journalists on the other, is
divided into two units: a managerial unit, with
normal administrative tasks, and an Editorial
Board.
One could argue that this model is
too static. The lack of dynamism is not a
handicap remotely comparable to the absence
of independence, but it does limit efficiency.
With a little imagination, however, we can
design a form of management that is not
untouchable. Similarly, we can devise clauses
to make the editorial body more fluid. For
example, the individual journalistic contract
could be have a fixed term (ten years and
renewable) and no longer be for life like now.
Today, very rightly, journalists refuse any
limitation in time and mobility, because if
they were to yield on these two points now
that the market is oligopolistic and rigid, they
would give the current ownership an
additional, ultimate weapon of blackmail and
enslavement. On the other hand, in a
liberalized context, and with the
disappearance of the other owner, a mobility
that would be able to make the whole sector
much more fluid could be accepted.
Furthermore, the current system of guarantees
is already completely crumbling with the
emergence of an extensive black market and
insecure, fixed-term contracts.
13. plan B: on one's own
initiative
History teaches us that proposals against
vested interests that seemed absolutely
indestructible have made progress and have
reached their objectives. The absolute state
has been dismantled. Slavery and torture were
abolished. The same fate will affect the death
penalty. Women have won their rights. Even
the IRI was dissolved....[editor's note: IRI:
Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, a
corporation set up by the Italian government
in 1933 to rescue failing companies that could
no longer afford to pay their creditors]. So we
cannot rule out that the need to be free to
communicate and to be informed, as urgent
and as trampled on a need as it is, will help a
project such as the one described to develop
and come to fruition, a project that now could
be deemed chimerical, as were all the those
cited above. But any policy of reform has a
duty to always have a Plan-B, just as long as
it takes us down the same road and recognizes
the same principles. The goal is always the
same: to separate media ownership from
editorial management.
11
The solution of the pseudo-public company is
drastic. There are other more subtle solutions
that would retain the current ownership
system, but subject it to mandatory rules
already planned in other areas.
If we assume the unreasonableness and the
perversity of the merger of different powers,
the non-separation between a part of the
economic power and the world of information
puts into action the most classic and the least
denounced conflict of interest.
With the glaring exception of Italy, rules were
invented that in some cases (though not
perfectly) respond to the need to keep the
ownership separate from the management.
Similarly, rigid anti-trust policies could
fragment the media giants and reduce the to a
competitive size, quelling cartel agreements
between publishers or establishing much
lower concentration thresholds than there are
currently.
The owners, if concerned -- as claimed - only
with economic proceeds, could themselves
initiate reform of their businesses that would
scale back their “secondary” power but that
would greatly increase their economic gains,
because the new company would be much
more appreciated by shareholders and
consumers. The desired decommercialization
of the media would not occur in this case, but
at least there would be less collateral damage.
Already Luigi Einaudi argued that “the
current owners [of newspapers] have an
interest in giving up rights, which they are
inevitably destined to be stripped of, if they
want to save what they should hold most dear,
the economic fruits of their business. In
addition, they should persuade themselves of
the advantage of such an abdication.”vii.
Nearly one hundred years have past since the
owners of the "Times" and "The Economist"
of London voluntarily abandoned their
absolute power in the selection of editors and
devised of a Board of Trustees. Einaudi asked
himself, "Why should the owners of the major
Italian newspapers see this restriction as a
harmful constraint, when it would surely be a
guarantee of the prosperity of the
business?"viii. The answer is simple: in Italy
the entrepreneurial class is very backward and
mediocre, and it does not dedicate itself
exclusively to business.
Even the current editors are more antiquated
than their predecessors of some generations
ago, who with the “director-manager” gave
Italian journalism a brief period of great
dignity.
To implement Plan-B, given the public
importance of pluralism in information
public policies should:
a) provide substantial public expenditure
conditional on the voluntary choice of the
owners of publishing companies to
eliminate their conflict of interests
through the conferring on a third party the
shares held in those companies, through a
non-revocable “trust” or a blind trust. The
political debate in Italy on these
institutions of guarantee and of separation
is misleading because it is conditioned by
the current paradoxical situation , but it is
not proper to deprive of value all the
institutions and rules that the legal system
has devised or may devise to achieve -
even partially - the aforementioned goal.
However, it would be a revolutionary step
compared to the current situation.
b) apply strict anti-trust laws including rules
already laid down for Proposal A:
ie, the requirement of current owners
across the media spectrum (print,
television and other forms of
communication) to own no more than one
of media element in each production area;
the requirement of a listing on the stock
exchange and nominal shares; limits on
stock ownership by preventing possession
of more than one hundredth part of the
share capital, in order to reach the goal of
a diffuse shareholder base, if anything
linking the acquisition of shares to an
innovative policy towards the reader-
consumer.
c) to require complete compliance with the
current legislation on the press, in part not
applied by the highlighting the rights
already acquired by readers and
expanding them with rules on
12
transparency of ownership, budgets and
decision-making processes, as well as on
the right of correction and the defense of
one's good character and one's own
version of events.
d) redefine the relationship between
advertising and editorial product, severely
punishing the current widespread mixing,
which is both a serious fraud on the reader
and one of the primary causes of the
current degradation and the unreliability
of communications.
If they pursued the goal of increasing the
scope, the authority and the material value of
their businesses, owners - without waiting for
constrictive legislation - should independently
launch a reform for maximum transparency
and the full empowerment of different and
distinct roles, through:
a) a new corporate statute, which provides a
clear separation between corporate
management and editorial management,
giving the latter to an Editorial Board
composed of
a) permanent members such as former
editors of the newspaper, the most
authoritative and oldest contributors
and guarantors co-opted by the board
itself because of their recognized
authority and independence;
- temporary members such as the
readers' representative, the
representatives of the editorial body
and – why not? – persons in civil
society chosen for their momentary,
prestigious role (for example, the
Chancellor of the local university,
etc.). The Editor of the publication is
appointed by the Editorial Board,
receives a term that lasts a fixed
number of years, may not be
reappointed and is removed only if a
qualified majority of the board
acknowledges a failure to meet
quantitative and qualitative standards
pre-established in the company
charter. The Editor, to be up to this
task, must be able to make hiring
decisions (now he can only
 recommend) as well as actually use
all the powers that have already been
designated, but only formally, by
national journalistic labor contract
(Article. 6), such as the power to
"establish and issue policy and
technical-professional directives of
the editorial work, to define the
duties of each journalist." Each year
the Editor has an estimated budget
for editorial expenses, adjusted to the
company's economic state. Of course,
the Editor's power is rebalanced by
rights now acquired the editorial
staff. Today most of these powers are
completely overridden by
“agreements between publisher and
editor."
b) the appointment of a "readers'
representative”, chosen by
periodically by readers (for example,
by subscribers) from a range of former
journalists of the newspaper, who is
not tied to the hierarchical structure of
the newspaper and is given an
independent space, in which to write
each week his own opinion on
information provided by the
newspaper and on the comments of
the public. c) the introduction of
ethical standards in the journalistic
contract concerning both the
journalists and the administration.
14. the rights of readers
and the guild of
journalists
No one has ever thought to guarantee the
rights of readers. Yet, they are consumers of a
commodity that is much more delicate than
others, because it conditions the public mind
and the health of the democracy. The reader
now has only very few legal guarantees on the
product he buys and those few are
disregarded. Likewise the reader is not
13
informed of how “his” newspaper shapes its
informative process, and there are few legal
defenses against the prevarications he
believes to suffer. Perhaps just a few rules
would be enough to remedy the most visible
faults:
a. Abolition of the required membership of
the Ordine dei Giornalisti [register of
journalists]. Therefore, cessation of its
corporate privileges. As Einaudi wrote,
"the requirement of the register is
immoral, because it tends to place a
limit on that which does not and must
not have limits, on the free expression of
thought"ix. Obviously all citizens should
be allowed to found and direct any
organ of expression of thought, with no
need of special personal qualifications
or registration or permission for the
newspaper (in whatever way it is
distributed). Moreover, the current
obligatory register cannot even enforce
the minimum ethical standards and
properly punish the most glaring
irregularities. If journalists want to keep
their register, they must renounce its
compulsory nature and related
privileges.
b. The requirement for each publication of
a certain size to have a statute that states
the internal rules of conduct. This
statute shall be made public and any
violation may be raised in assessment by
the editor and the reader.
c. Similarly, with the register remaining as
it is today, it would be an ethically
significant move to transform the
current two-way division between
professional journalists and journalist
publicists into a three-way division
covering also journalist communicators.
d. Prohibition of hiring in newspapers of
journalists who in the last three years
have worked in press offices,
advertising agencies, consulting firms
and public relations agencies. And vice
versa, for the principal of reciprocity, a
ban on hiring in these offices journalists
who have worked in a newsroom in the
last three years. By law, professional
 journalists should be hired at
newspapers and journalist
communicators should work in press
offices, but today the distinction
between the two careers is not
considered, to the severe detriment of
both groups and with irreparable harm
to the accuracy of the information.
e. Absolute incompatibility between the
work in the newsroom of a newspaper
and any other professional work, even if
not official.
f. Public Statement signed upon hiring and
repeated periodically, containing a list
of the political and para-political
organizations and other groups related
to the sphere of the interests of
journalism, to which the journalist
belongs.
g. Effective enforcement of the whole
system of regulations on information,
starting from Article 21 of the Italian
Constitution (also not observed). Let's
go back to the civil code and the
criminal code. There is nothing worse
than a rule that is not enforced and falls
silently into the oblivion of disuse.
Similarly useless are all the “shouts"
about ethics without any severe
penalties.
h. Introduction of these rules in the
national contract of journalistic work.
The interest of publishers in employees
who are easy targets of blackmail, and
therefore predisposed to servility, is
well-known; this is why it is necessary
for everyone to assume collective
responsibility in the realm of
professional ethics.
i. Elimination of the most visible
inconsistencies of the restrictive
legislation. The most serious example is
the restrictive contradiction of
professional secrecy for journalists:
Article 200 of the penal code on
professional secrecy with one hand
extends this right to journalists and with
the other takes it away.
j. Severe reduction of civil and criminal
consequences of "libel" for the press.
From 1984 the Court of Cassation
14
[Italy's supreme court] has separated the
criminal proceedings from civil
proceedings. From that time, Italians,
since they care so much about their
honor, can have it restored in civil court,
asking for millions in compensation and
neglecting to demand a criminal
sentencing. Honor is now regarded as a
concrete thing. Often the value of the
claim is enormous and the only purpose
of the demand is to intimidate.
15. conclusions. the birth
of the "pannunzio
society for the freedom
of information"
We formed the "Pannunzio Society for the
freedom of information" among those who
care about the fate of what Kant called
"freedom of the pen" and who wish to discuss
and advance projects for reform inspired by
the principles and criteria set out in the Blue
Book. The "Pannunzio Society" is an
association that does not stop at an account of
ideas, but is also committed to practical action
in reporting the continuous violations, by now
widely tolerated, of the current legislation.
The “Society” is inspired by the “Societé des
Amis de la liberté et de la presse” that arose in
France in November 1817. Joined by such
figures as Benjamin Constant, Achille de
Broglie, Paul-Louis Courier, and Jean-
Baptiste Say, the Societé, through a frenetic
activity of appeals, petitions letters and
subscriptions to pay the penalty fines that
opposition newspapers were assessed, was
able to influence the reform of French
legislation on the press. The experience was
historically important because, for the first
time, people formed associations to fight for
the freedom of expression, showing that they
understood that in their time - as in our time –
freedom of expression assumed a strategic
importance. Indeed, the attacks on freedom of
the newest forms of communication can be
seen as similar to those suffered by the
printed press at the birth of that medium.

The “Pannunzio Society” also takes

inspiration from the civil battles conducted by
the newspaper “Il Mondo” and by its editor
and founder, Mario Pannunzio, as well as by
the “Salvemini Movement”

The "Pannunzio Society" does not support

any political party, and invites as members all
those European citizens, across the entire
political and ideological spectrum, who are
concerned about the miserable state of
information.

The "Society,” which grows by cooptation

and by the membership of supporters, has
determined that journalists may not exceed
on-third of the membership, precisely to
underscore that the Society's action is alien to
the corporate spirit and concerns every
conscious citizen.

Similarly, the "Pannunzio Society"

will not only provide analysis, debate and
concrete proposals, but will adopt, in Italy and
Europe, every possible means to pursue its
goals of freedom x.

Footnotes
i
R. A. DAHL, On Democracy, Roma-Bari, 2000
ii
G. SARTORI, Democrazia: cosa è, 2000
iii
J. RIFKIN, Voici venu le temps des reseaux, in "Maniere
de voir - Le Monde diplomatique", n. 63, 2002
iv
N. Irti, L’ordine giuridico del mercato,, Roma-Bari, 1998
v
F. BOAT and others, Assetti proprietari e mercato delle
imprese, vol. I, Bologna, 1994
vi
R. PERNA, Public company e democrazia societaria,
Bologna, 1998
vii
L. EINAUDI, Il problema della stampa quotidiana [1943],
now in Giornali e giornalisti, Florence, 1974
viii
Ibid
ix
L. EINAUDI, Albi di giornalisti [1945], now in Giornali e
giornalisti, Florence, 1974
x
This Blue Book is largely derived from E. MARZO Le voci
del padrone, Dedalo Editions, 2006, where the treatment is
obviously broader and more reasoned.

15