At the roots of freedom

The European Union has decided not to adopt any resolution on the pluralism of information and on the freedom of the means of communication. The European Parliament established so on Wednesday, 21 October; it had been called to express its view on the two joint motions respectively proposed by the parliamentary groups of the centre right and of the centre left. The documents were clearly of opposite tendency. That of the centre left spoke of means of communication “under attack”, of the need to guarantee the pluralism of the media, of conflicts of interest and the interferences of the Italian government on the national and foreign media. That of the centre right declared that press freedom in Italy was in no way threatened and that, on the contrary, it is rooted in the daily life of citizens, as well as being guaranteed by the Constitution.The vote of the European Parliament in effect has satisfied no one. But this does not mean that this very delicate issue should be shelved or put on the backburner, far from it. Freedom of information and political and economic control of the media are vital questions that transcend the frontiers of Italy and concern the whole of Europe (and also beyond). In this sense, the error of the Italian representatives of the European Parliament was that of wishing at all costs to have the continental institution express its judgement on a question intimately bound up with the Italian “case”. The argument is serious and cannot be exhausted in political discussion blinded by ideology. Apart from the result (or lack of it) of the vote in the EP, the debate in the chamber at Brussels revealed the scale of the problem at the general level.The means of communication find their significance in their capacity to connect with people despite differences, furnish useful information and contents, help individuals and society as a whole to progress, and invigilate (according to the British model of the “watchdog”) on the correct use of power to the benefit of citizens. The role they play is of fundamental importance precisely because it can ensure an effective democracy. On the other hand, the power to condition people’s consciousness that the media can exert is mouth-watering to the centres of political and economic interest, which are seeking to bend them to their will.The means of communication depend on economic power because producing communication involves very high costs. They, in turn, can condition economic trends depending on how they treat certain issues and the importance they attach to particular problems. A similar two-way link is revealed also in the relation with the political system. On the one hand, politics is a sector with a high degree of newsworthiness, as a result of the repercussions of parliamentary decisions on the life of citizens/electors. On the other, political leaders have an interest in using the media as a sounding board to propagate their own positions and increase their propaganda effect by turning them into a media show, in terms of public visibility and popular support.As in the case of all “powers”, each sphere of influence has its own sense and functions to the best in meeting its own objectives if and only if a strong balance between them exists, without mutual interferences, conditioning or pressure. But too many factors act as ballast. The great publishing empires, the concentration of editorial control in a few hands, suffocate freedom of criticism and of opinion, and compromise the chance of pluralism of information, which is an irreplaceable resource. Conflicts of interests represented by those who are proprietors of mass media and who also play a role in government undermine at its roots the chance for any effective independence of information from power. The conditioning of the market – today even more oppressive due to the crisis – clips the wings of the freedom of expression that should be enjoyed by press editorial boards, often called to submit to the laws of marketing to the detriment of any social interest.If we really wish to tackle this problem seriously, we need to go to its roots, and establish once and for all rules to discipline the sector. It’s not a question of developing sterile polemical debates only to give a show of strength; every kind of ideological partisanship needs to be put to one side in order to restore to information the freedom that is its very essence. According to what is recognized by numerous political exponents at the European level, the premises exist for the definition of precise rules to prevent any conflicts of interest and the power of publishing concentrations or media empires. But that means renouncing the battles conducted by parliamentary motions and focusing instead on the crux of the problems.The professionals of communication and individual citizens are also called to make their contribution: the former by providing information in an ethically correct way, the latter by learning to draw a distinction between the publicly useful communication and the communication that only serves to satisfy private interests.