The press is truly your friend

(… with drawing:

taken from here , just to remind us that we have always been excellent communicators, and that we have often worked for those who didn't work for us. But luckily we put that period behind us. Or not? …)

According to the communis opinio, it is not good for a politician to criticize the independent and sovereign press: if he does, it is argued, he exposes himself to the accusation of wanting to limit its freedom. Now, to make such an accusation against me would be more ridiculous than ungenerous: although this blog has harshly criticized the propaganda drift of the Italian press, especially for its lack of pluralism (i.e. the fact that only one propaganda was allowed), here we have always clarified that freedom of expression of thought is and must also and above all be freedom of propaganda .

Therefore, as you will have seen, over the years the operation of truth that we have tried to carry out here has been characterized by two specific elements, not frequently found elsewhere.

First, what we have always challenged the so-called mainstream press (which, as we shall see, is the whole press) was not the right to its opinions, but the right to its facts! Everyone has the right to their opinions, no one has the right to their facts. The archetype of this observation is the well-known post on the slight inaccuracies of the Corsera (useful re-reading for those who haven't read it).

Second, what has always worried us has been the trend, visible from 2016 onwards, to censor the network, regardless of who was the victim of this restriction. One of the first articles in this sense is the one on the gift to the right (published by Fatto Quotidiano) and one of the latest videos is this one on the control of political discourse .

Our assessments have always been supported by an awareness: the dynamics that lead the press to misinform (presenting opinions as if they were facts) are objective. Subjective evaluations leave the time they find: when a journalist disinforms, in the overwhelming majority of cases he does not do it out of malice of heart but for a complex of other reasons beyond his control and not subject to his control, as we have discussed at length here .

In short: there are no "bad" or "enemy" journalists.

It obviously follows that there are no such thing as "good" or "friend" journalists, and that's okay.

It is therefore better to avoid them all, if possible, or in any case, if you really can't do it, to avoid raising fuss or mounting controversy on the facts or statements they report, given that these facts or these statements are often unrelated to reality, as I explained to you in this post with a long series of examples that concerned me directly (and on which I was therefore the primary source).

Adjuvandum , I give you two fresh examples of press reviews: one from the national "right-wing" press, and one from the local "left-wing" press. You will get, without animosity and without clamor, an idea of ​​what it means to abuse a non-existent right to one's own affairs. The episodes are minor and I draw no particular conclusions from them, except one: that of reiterating my invitation to be kind enough not to annoy me anymore with observations that draw nourishment from the glittering world of the media, because in the vast majority of cases facts and declarations found there are detached from reality.

So let us proceed with these two further chapters of our Comédie humaine …

Scènes de la via politique (from the "right-wing" national newspapers)

Today in the press review I find this valuable contribution which I am interested in for reasons you can imagine. So I learn with surprise that:

But you look! I, on the other hand, remembered something a little different and in fact a quick response highlights that:

1. October 18, 2022: Proposal of law: MOLINARI and others: " Establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the work of the government and the measures it has adopted to prevent and deal with the epidemiological emergency of COVID-19 " (384)
2. October 24, 2022: Bill: BIGNAMI and others: " Establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the management of the health emergency caused by the epidemic spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the failure to update the national pandemic plan" (446)
3. 25 October 2022: Proposal of law: FARAONE and others: " Establishment of a parliamentary commission of inquiry into the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic , the management of the pandemic emergency, the measures adopted to prevent and contrast the spread of the virus as well as on the relevant consequences for the organization of the National Health Service" (459)

I refer to the chronology of parliamentary acts because it has its own objectivity and authority, but obviously you frequenters of the blue social toilet are well aware that it was Claudio, not others, who brought the topic of the COVID Commission of Inquiry into the Debate, with the associated difficulty to bringing it to us from a position of majority (and what a majority!); you also have elements to imagine the motivations that can push those who, like my colleague Faraone, voted for Lascienza:

to join a similar Commission. The one for freedom is certainly not a historical battle of the political force to which it belonged (the one to which it belongs has too short a history to be able to judge it), which suggests an easily legible tactical intention in certain political gestures, and if we say so and it we write here is only because others don't say it and we don't read it elsewhere.

Scènes de la vie de province (the local "leftist" press)

Yesterday a meeting was held in Chieti on the age-old theme of doubling the railway line between Rome and Pescara, an issue which, as you can imagine, I know a little, interest me a little, and also concerns a little the province of Chieti, i.e. the my constituency. The occasion was the presentation of this independent report , which evaluates the planning expressed so far by RFI (further information can be found on the FS holding website ). I think it can be said, because it is factual, that the projects being discussed today are the result of a political season in which the centre-left was hegemonic, and moreover the current CEO of RFI, a manager with a proven reputation , was appointed by the Giallorossi government, just as his predecessor had been appointed by the Gentiloni government . These are facts, not assessments. Conversely, it is an assessment (mine) that the meeting was particularly important given the relevance of the topic, just as I found the topics that were advanced extremely interesting.

So I read with curiosity the report of this event in the local press, in which I found two very valuable interventions by my esteemed colleague D'Alfonso:

(on the Center)

(on the Messenger).

Curiosity and, I might add, surprise. To motivate the latter, I owe you a minimum of Theatine history. The meeting took place at Civitella, the acropolis of the Teate Romana , in a modern amphitheater under the ancient amphitheater. Leaving there, I walked along the cardo of the Roman city, which today is Corso Marrucino, because I had an appointment in San Giustino . And who do I meet you in Piazza Valignani, that is, eleven minutes away from the place from which I left while the last operation was in progress?

But obviously dear friend D'Alfonso, to whose amiable question: "What are you doing here?" I answer with affectionate irony: "Your job: I was at Civitella defending the citizens of Manoppello!" (Luciano is proudly from Lettomanoppello). We part, and he walks towards Civitella. Time: 11+11=22, I was out at 12:37, and the event was over before 1. So you understand well that reading the local press review, opening me to the conflicting evidence of a D'Alfonso co-present in two non-adjacent places, left me at a difficult crossroads:

1. I could think that I was more distracted than I thought, and that for this reason the presence of the Hon had escaped me. D'Alfonso at the Cianfarani Auditorium, as well as the fact that I had been living together for five years in Parliament for five years, of which four and a half in the Senate Finance Committee and a half in the Chamber Finance Committee, with a colleague endowed with the mystical gift of bilocation had escaped my notice. of a follower of St. Peter of Alcantara or of St. Francis of Assisi;
2. or I could think that those read in the local press were words delivered ex post in a hurry to journalists to fill an absence justified by other institutional commitments, but reported as if they had been said during the meeting (that is, not with a "respondent / reached by telephone on the significance of the initiative, the Honorable said that…" or similar formula).

Given that no one saw his friend Luciano at Cianfarani, and given that in Abruzzo a minority thinks he is a saint (so say the results of the last elections, and after all he would be the first to shy away, out of intellectual humility ), "it occurs to me" (cit.) that the correct hypothesis is the second one: a compliant press suggested (without saying it explicitly) that the friend was there, to avoid noting his absence from such an important event for its constituency .

Let's be clear: the point here is not and does not want to be an evaluation of the colleague's political action. This assessment is up to his constituents and as far as I'm concerned it ends in the factual observation that if there is a problem, he is objectively a part of it, given that he belongs to the PD and it was the PD in recent years that managed some all in the infrastructural chain at various levels, for the simple reason that the PD was incumbent on doing so as a government party. This obviously doesn't mean that the colleague isn't working to find a solution: I'm sure he's doing it, in his own way, and I add that his presence or absence from a meeting is not a particularly significant metric of his commitment.

But that's not the point.

The point is that he wasn't there (done), but, as you can see, for the local press there was ( fake )!

Of course, they are small miseries of provincial life: I shouldn't pay them and I don't attach much importance to them, because it would be wrong to do so. Among other things, more than the printed paper counts, as we know, television ( at 10:15 minutes ). So, no question : just to show that the details, which have their importance, do not escape even those who have much else to deal with (and in fact we will deal with it together in a bit: I am rapporteur in the Commission of the COM (2022 ) 583 ). Of course, after an electoral campaign played out by my opponents exclusively on the subject of my presumed absence from the area, and during which the local press paid me a minimum amount of attention, details of this type, how to say… amusing!

If you compete against those who enjoy a media bi-location that allows them to be there even when they aren't there, and if perhaps the press ignores you when you're there but amplifies the message of those who say you're not there, the road is all uphill. and it would be above all if I didn't have other showcases from which to present my proposals.

But I have them.

Conclusions

Leonardo told him to rebuke his friend in private and to praise him openly. What if instead you want to express yourself about who is neither your friend nor your enemy? Simple: you do it on this blog that doesn't exist, for an audience of readers that never existed!

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This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2023/02/la-stampa-e-veramente-vostra-amica.html on Sun, 12 Feb 2023 14:56:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.