The EU Commission spreads money to the big newspapers. Who cares?
This is how and why the big newspapers are losing more and more credibility. The italics of Teo Dalavecuras
The italics of two economists such as Tito Boeri and Roberto Perotti, which could be read the other day in la Repubblica , are worthy of note right from the title (" Prof Canfora's words in freedom "), considering that the famous philologist and historian belongs to the elite of the "untouchables" of our intellectual-publicistic world, and regularly intervenes in the public debate with left-oriented and above all "anti-fascist" opinions, on a line more consistent with that of the Roman newspaper, although his articles are normally hosted on the pages of Corriere della Sera .
The two authors point out that Canfora "launched into a series of disconcerting and offensive statements towards Giorgia Meloni, on the border between the exercise of freedom of opinion and actual insult". The article, well-argued and severe – without ever degenerating, however, into the manipulative and quibbling prose (substantially in bad faith) so in vogue today – describes the paradoxical and unacceptable consequences of Canfora's statements. And it does so convincingly as far as I'm concerned.
But this is not the aspect of the article that made me reflect: they remain obvious despite the fact that – as Boeri and Perotti note – many have jumped on the bandwagon of Meloniphobia dragged by Canfora's heavy words, perhaps making things worse. The observation that struck me is another: even if the Bandwagon effect of Canfora's words can be explained with the intention (yes, good intentions ) of countering those who propose "a narrative of the twenty years in a nostalgic key", in these cases the best weapon – the two economists reiterate – “is credibility, a weapon that those who defend Canfora's disconcerting statements today deprive themselves of”.
From the point of view of credibility, the phenomenon seems broader than the case of this controversy which, like controversies almost always, is ephemeral; it concerns a method that has been established for years in the creation of mass media content (I'm not referring to the so-called social networks that I don't frequent and therefore know nothing about). The techniques applied by preference are those of the deliberate ambiguity of the headlines, of the composition of the front pages which have less and less to do with a sensible priority of the news and more and more with the commitment to orient public opinion, and leverages a large apparatus of comments (including cartoons) which almost always have the same polemical targets (in different forms the same method is applied with equal scruple by the radio and television media). In short, we can see a total lack of interest on the part of what were once called independent media outlets in gaining, or at least not losing, credibility.
A few days ago Ivo Caizzi – correspondent for Corriere from Brussels for many years – talked about how the European Commission distributes money (ours, so as not to forget) to the European media (obviously including newspapers such as Corriere della sera, la Repubblica and ilSole 24Ore ) with the effect of obtaining "good" press and above all banishing the "bad" press. Caizzi's article goes unnoticed, except that a right-wing newspaper like La Verità dedicates a large piece to it. Not on purpose, a couple of days later Politico published a long article on the opening of an investigation by the EPPO (English acronym for European Public Prosecutor) against the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, candidate to remain president after the June 9 elections. The topic is the text -based negotiations between the president and Pfizer's number one at the time of Covid, Albert Burla, for the supply of the vaccine, which translated into a "forbidden to minors" contract, i.e. full of omissions in the version given to the public of European taxpayers.
Since journalism is not an exact science, one can always argue that this was not front page news and perhaps (for good measure) accuse those who disagree of attacking the freedom of "editorial choices". Neither Corriere nor Repubblica nor Sole24Ore "screamed" the initiative of the European PM against von der Leyen on the front page, the former because he evidently did not consider it so important, despite dedicating an extensive article to it on the internal pages; the other two for an excellent reason: neither Repubblica nor ilSole24Ore found the space of a line in their pages for that news.
Conclusion: the three newspapers dedicated as many articles to the non-sensational news of Ilaria Salis' "thank you" to Mattarella, all reported by a shout on the front page. That other news, on von der Leyen, which could perhaps ruin her candidacy as head of the Commission for the next five years, and in any case disrupt the games already underway for the formation of the next EU Commission, was underestimated or even overlooked . It happens. Who knows if the generosity to the printed press recounted by Caizzi has anything to do with this distraction. What is certain is that "credibility" is not the first, and perhaps not even the last, concern in the world of what we insist on calling, less and less properly, information.
The above is just one example of the absolute indifference of the printed press for its own credibility, but there are many others, perhaps less colorful but even more significant. A few days ago I read a modestly scandalized editorial dedicated to the upcoming European Parliament elections in the Corriere della Sera : the superficiality demonstrated by the nomination of famous but not necessarily competent candidates was deplored. Since the Corriere is still a newspaper and not a volume of the Treccani Encyclopedia, this denunciation of an alleged malpractice, which is as old as the "European Parliament" itself, sounded a little strange, but that's the least of it. In the editorial in question, as in the vast majority of those that have been and, alas, will continue to be published in the next eight weeks on the subject of "European" elections, not a single word has been written or will be written on the fact that the parliament of Strasbourg is objectively the caricature of a real parliament: it is the sum of twenty-seven delegations elected with different rules from twenty-seven different electorates and – above all – no member of this parliament is allowed to present bills but only to vote on those proposed by the Commission European Parliament, at the end of a long and convoluted negotiation process with subjects and in places outside the so-called European Parliament. Therefore neither a true parliament nor truly European. Unimportant details? Maybe, they are subjective evaluations. Certainly, ignoring these “details” that betray the profoundly anti-political nature of official Europeanism supports Brussels' narrative. But it's just a coincidence.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/commissione-europea-finanziamenti-grandi-giornali/ on Fri, 05 Apr 2024 07:19:19 +0000.