1. to be
aware that the media are not free
In the new media age freedom of information is guaranteed to
some extent by constitutions and laws but in reality the media
are manipulated, other-directed, conformist. Journalists lose
their role of witnesses to reality and are transformed into
conduits for the transmission of the messages of others. The
reader, the viewer and the listener are reduced to the role of
unaware objects, without any rights. Now, the media identify
ever more with their ownership.
2.
there is no democracy without independent information
Western democracies cease to be so in the absence of such a
basic requisite of democracy as independent information. Now,
the political game, especially in Italy, is visibly fixed
through the manipulation of public opinion. We fought so hard
for free elections, we need to start to fight for free opinions,
that is to say, freely formed opinions.
3. the
three powers of the “public sphere”: for a new separatism
In modern societies, the comprehensive “public sphere” is
composed of the political and state apparatus, the economic
power, and the media power. These three powers, rather than
being separate, are intricately intertwined. The public should
be made aware of the damage created by the extreme distortion of
information caused by the dependence of politicians on legal and
illegal sources of financing, the damage generated from
other-directed information by those economic and political
powers; the damage created to the market by political
bureaucracy and dependence on public financing.
4.
citizens, readers, consumers
We must establish, almost from nothing a “right of readers” who
are currently not protected either as citizens (they are not
guaranteed pluralistic or independent information) or as
consumers. And yet, as buyers of goods, they are “consumers”
(moreover, consumers of a product that is much more delicate
than other goods because it conditions the public mind and the
health of the democracy) and therefore, as consumers they should
have at least the same kind of rights as buyers of any other
consumer good, as regards transparency, the absence of
commingling of interests, the absence of polluted news. |
5.
information on the net
The Internet is the greatest medium that has ever existed, in
terms of the size of the targeted public, and it is
characterized by the absence of a strict separation between
users and producers of information: anyone, in a few clicks, can
read and produce. Information on the Net runs, therefore, along
horizontal lines that constantly intersect the vertical lines of
the traditional media and that, being horizontal, escape the
logic and mechanisms of control which have, thus far, prevented
the press, radio and television from freely exerting their
fundamental role in any democratic country: the creation,
through the free and independent reporting of the facts and of
history, of a civil consciousness in the people, transforming
them from passive subjects of democracy to its protagonists.
Defending freedom of expression on the Internet means to defend
this hope.
6. a
policy reform
Among the urgent reforms needed to safeguard democracy is real
reform, legislative and otherwise, that will build five
structural conditions, both to ensure freedom of information and
to establish the rights of readers and consumers: 1) establish
the relevance of primary interest of a free and independent
information, as a necessary component for the existence of a
political democracy; 2) be aware that the freedom to inform can
be ensured only by an actual plurality of sources; 3) pursue a
policy that has as its aim the maximum possible separation
between the powers of the "public sphere" and thus also between
the economic power and that of the media; 4) recognize in the
"information good" a status different from that of a simple
consumer good, and then build a unique and specific form of
governance for media companies which tends to progressively
implement the principle of separatism between ownership of the
means of journalism and its management, including through
intermediate steps such as taking away the owner's control over
informational content. 5) consider as fundamental the presence
of the reader-consumer among the protagonists of communication.
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