Scazzo Reuters-Ants on Vodafone-Huawei

1 June 20213 years ago babelfish

Facts and media fuss over a decision by the Draghi government regarding a Huawei supply to Vodafone

The Draghi government puts the stakes on Huawei also for Vodafone and a journalistic scuffle breaks out with a back and forth between Formiche and Reuters . Here are all the details.

Vodafone Italy will be able to use Chinese Huawei equipment to build its 5G technology network. But it will have to respect the strict conditions that the government has imposed on it through the exercise of the golden power.

On May 20, the Council of Ministers authorized Huawei's supply to Vodafone. However, he dictated a series of prescriptions. Huawei, for example, will not be able to intervene remotely to solve technical problems of the network. In general, government sources – cited by the news agency Reuters – speak of a particularly high level of security that Vodafone will have to ensure, wrote Repubblica .

For months, the United States has been putting pressure on Italy and other European countries to avoid the use of Huawei equipment in their next-generation telecommunications networks and to limit the use of the plants of a second Chinese supplier (ZTE), arguing that two companies pose a security risk. Huawei and Zte firmly deny the allegations.

Over the past 12 months, Italy has taken a tougher stance towards Huawei, while not completely banning it from 5G infrastructure. The Conte government prevented the Fastweb telecommunications group from signing an agreement with Huawei for the construction of its 5G (core) core network, which processes highly sensitive data, Repubblica recalled.

"The choice of the Conte II government – recalled Formiche – was harshly criticized by Pietro Guindani, then president of Asstel and since July 2008 he has been chairman of the board of directors of Vodafone Italia. As we told on Formiche.net , Guindani defined the exercise of special powers as "a forcing" ".

Then, in March 2021, Draghi imposed stringent conditions on two other agreements: between Fastweb and Zte and between Linkem, Huawei and Zte.

A controversy was triggered on the news: a journalist from Formiche di Paolo Messa accused Reuters of not having cited the article on Formiche.net directed by Giorgio Rutelli at the base – according to Carrer himself, author of the article – of the launch Reuters of a few hours after the piece of Formiche .

According to Giuseppe Fonte of Reuters, however, “the extract of the decree can be found on the Montecitorio website: https://documenti.camera.it/…/leg.18.sed0517.allegato_a… . It was a question of clarifying who the supplier was. And Draghi does not stop China (again), but authorizes the supply agreement with prescriptions ”.

Below is the Formiche-Reuters correspondence.

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Here is the post by Gabriele Carrer published on his Facebook profile :

CAN ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PRESS AGENCIES IN THE WORLD TOLERATE THE VICES OF ITALIAN JOURNALISM?

Yesterday I made a mistake: after revealing in “Formiche” that the Draghi government used special powers on Vodafone's 5G network in relation to the Chinese supplier Huawei, I tagged Reuters and Reuters Italia in the post on Twitter. I was hoping to give visibility to my scoop. And instead…
Here is the letter I wrote to Alessandra Galloni, director of Reuters. I would love to read the opinions of colleagues.
–

Dear manager,

I'm Gabriele Carrer, journalist of “Formiche”.

I hope you will forgive me for using Italian. However, it is the language that most easily allows me to express my amazement and disappointment at what has recently happened.
Indeed, Italian – with its complexity and its nuances, which make the unspoken an essential element – represents one of the possible explanations for a peculiarity of Italian journalism, interviews with questions and answers. "Interviews are stolen articles," Vittorio Feltri recently said. On several occasions I feel I can share this approach.

This is one of the two vices of Italian journalism that I just can't stand: I prefer the Anglo-Saxon approach of a few but decisive quotes.
The other is the difficulty of Italian journalists in citing colleagues and other newspapers as sources. I know that getting to the news first is everything. But (trying to) do it by deceiving the reader and appropriating the work of others is a squalid baseness. Imagine that I am of the idea that citing the work of others – especially if a news confirms and / or does not deny – represents an added value. In this sense, in my opinion, Anglo-Saxon journalism reaches its highest point when it uses formulas such as “Another newspaper first reported this story”. Perhaps, however, I am deluding myself: everywhere we are a largely greedy and disloyal category.

You will therefore understand my amazement and disappointment at an article published yesterday on Reuters. The theme was the use of special powers (the Golden power regulation) by the Italian government on Vodafone's 5G network in relation to the Chinese supplier Huawei. The authors speak of "sources". But they forget to mention the real source, what probably turned on the light bulb: my six-hour-old article in “Ants”, in which I revealed – with open sources, other than “sources”! – and I explained the decision of the executive led by Mario Draghi. Maybe I was wrong to tag Reuters and Reuters Italia in the Twitter post published by the newspaper profile to give visibility to my scoop. Maybe I trusted too much in the good manners of Anglo-Saxon journalism.

Here you find my article: https://formiche.net/…/dpcm-draghi-su-5g-vodafone-huawei/.

And here yours: https://www.reuters.com/…/italy-gives-vodafone-5g-deal…/.

Soon I will publish this letter on my social profiles hoping it will stimulate a reflection among colleagues – not on the specific case but on our vices. In the event that you find the time and would like to answer me, our exchange will obviously remain confidential unless you specify otherwise.

Thanks for your attention and have a nice day.

With estimates,

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Here is the first comment by Giuseppe Fonte of Reuters; other comments at the bottom of Carrer's post :

Scoop? The extract of the decree is available on the Montecitorio website: https://documenti.camera.it/…/leg.18.sed0517.alnex_a …. It was a question of clarifying who the supplier was. And Draghi does not tow China (again), but authorizes the supply agreement with prescriptions. The title of Formiche suggests that Draghi has placed – “tow” – a veto on a supply agreement between Huawei and Vodafone. The text states that in the council of ministers of May 20, 2021, the twentieth of the Draghi era, the go-ahead for the Prime Minister's decree with the "exercise of special powers, with prescription", without clarifying what it consists of exercise and what are the requirements. And to be clear, anyone who knows the matter knows that the supplier had to be Huawei. Vodafone uses Nokia and Huawei, but the golden power on 5G does not apply to EU suppliers. A little pretentious to ask to be even mentioned ”.

This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/formiche-reuters-vodafone-huawei/ on Tue, 01 Jun 2021 08:10:00 +0000.