We are
students coming from different countries of europe between 16 and 18 years old
and during this week we gathered in Europahaus to discuss about freedom of
speech and press in our countries, and as we are the media workshop we are now
going to illustrate some informations that we’ve found out.
Italy is now
on the 52nd position of the Press Freedom Index and has the most problematic
situations between the countries we analyzed. One of the main problems of Italy
is mafia, a criminal organization which affects media and politics through
bribery and death threats.
There are
now six journalists in Italy which are still under police protection like
Roberto Saviano who published a novel about real facts regarding mafia and then
received death threats. Another problem is the government’s influence on media:
in fact italian government has the control of the national public TV
broadcasting station, Rai. In 2004 it has been quite a problem since Silvio
Berlusconi already owned some private channels and when he became first
minister he basically had complete control over the media.
In Spain the
situation is slightly better but there are still some problem concerning the
royal family and ETA. Recently a rapper has been sentenced to three years and a
half after publishing a few songs with threatens and sexist comments against
the royal family. ETA instead is a terrorist organisation which, demanding
independence for the Basque Country, murdered 820 people between 1959 and 2011,
being the last European terrorist group to declare the ceasefire. In 2016 a
woman after joking about terrorism victims was condemned to one year of prison
accused for the enhancing of terrorism but eventually she was absolved.
In Germany
the situation isn’t as problematic as in Italy or Spain but recently there has
been a case regarding a comedian, Jan Böhermann, who mocked restrictions on
free speech by the Turkish government and eventually has been accused of
criminally “insulting” the Turkish President with a satirical poem. Now there
has been discussions about the rightness of this section of criminal code which
bans insulting representatives of other governments.
Netherlands
instead are in a great position, the 5th, of the Press Freedom Index and don’t
have any relevant problems regarding freedom of speech.
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