When three members of a family where stabbed to death, and so were two other people in the house, the Italian press smelled the blood and slung itself on to it. Nobody thought the massacre could have generated another horrible spectacle: Italian media giving the worst out of themselves. The coverage of a massacre was the discoverage of the unprofessional level of the Italian journalism.
Four pm. Twelfth of December 2006. Small town of Erba, close to Milan, where the xenophobe party “Northern League” gets up to 20%. Raffaella Castagna opens the door to her killer — or killers. Someone murders her with hammers and cleavers. After that, they kill her two year old baby Youssef. Then the mother of Raffaella. Then the massacre goes on against two neighbours, of whom one, miraculously, survives in coma. The murders, or murder, set the house on fire and leave.
Eight six pm. Same day. The main Italian agency, ANSA, gives the first confused news: “House in fire, four killed. Maybe murdered.” Two hours later, the ‘truth’ is on line: “Massacre: man murders partner, son, two women and sets house on fire.” The Italian press ‘knows’ that the husband/father was the responsible. At 12.35, ANSA adds “Released few months ago, murders wife, son, mother-in-law and a neighbour.” And soon after the sum-up: “Four dead, amongst which a child of two, and a serious injured due to the fury of a young Tunisian previous offender. The man, Abdel Fami Marzouk, 25, was released few months ago, and is wanted by the police.”
Mr Marzouk “is wanted” by the police, he is not yet proved guilty. According to the Professional Association (Ordine dei giornalisti, ODG), Italian journalists should respect the presumption of innocence[1]. “Due to the fury of a Young Tunisian” does not seem to respect any possible innocence. But the headlines of the newspapers the day after will not have any respect for anything at all. In this rat-race, would say Bette Davis, everybody’s guilty till they’re proved innocent — one of the differences between journalism and civilization. [2]
The liberal newspaper La Repubblica titles “Massacre in the family: kills and sets on fire three women and his own child.” And just after: “The murderer, Tunisian, was freed by the pardon law[3].” Il Corriere della Sera, arguably the most respected Italian newspaper, seems to put oil on fire with the headline “Catch the Moroccan.” In the slang of xenofobic people, who see expatriates with the only common quality of being likely criminals, a Moroccan is someone who comes from any region from Morocco to Iran. “Catch the Moroccan”, in northern Italy, sounds like “Catch the nigger” in Missouri. The xenophobic attitude in Italy nowadays reminds actually the atmosphere in southern US some decades ago. The climate is so hot, that only two weeks after the massacre — without any evident connection — a camp of Gypsy in another small town close to Milan was set on fire by normal citizens, who did a normal march, under the eyes of the police, with torches and petrol, to burn the tents of the aliens — 35 of whom children.
The ODG says that journalists should “Be responsible towards the readership.” More than everywhere, in that region, accusing a Tunisian person of murder is not the most responsible act the media can do. Luckily for him, Mr Marzouk was in Tunisia that day, but the entourage of the Castagna family was convinced he was guilty[4]. In the end, he was able to escape, if not the media massacre, at least the physical lynching. Newspapers other than the two above had only worst headlines — with the noticeable exception of some newspaper to small to make a real difference in that rat race.
The same day when the newspapers were on newsagents’ shelves with such headlines, the father of Raffaella Castagna announced that his son-in-law was actually in Tunisia. The police confirmed. The day after, Il Giornale, owned by the the brother of former PM Silvio Berlusconi, in a rare act of contrition published a mea culpa: “The first victim was the truth”. Unfortunately, on the same page another article was against the young Tunisian man: “He did not kill, but he ruined the family’s life”.
The following days the investigative talents of the Italian journalism produced real gems, which seemed to come out from the perfervid imagination of a b-movie script writer. B-movies — something Italian readers are used to, in a country where most political magazines used to offer gratuitous (female) semi-nudity on their cover-pages. The media linked Mr Marzouk’s criminal past to the massacre. A vendetta from some foreign mafia, said La Repubblica, 13 December, as if the Italian mafia were not used to kill relatives of enemies (the so called transversal-vendetta). The assertion is contradicted by police statement that Ms Castagna knew her murders, and that these were two. The newspapers tried to link the brother of Mr Marzouk to the massacre, only to be contradicted by the police as soon as the news was published.
Unable to find a scapegoat, the media began using the massacre as a dressing for their daily gossip-salad. “The Tunisian betrayed her wife — the letters of Raffaella.” (Il Giornale, 13 December) Or “A former fiancee killed Raffaella” (La Stampa, 5 January 2007). And so on.
Finally, the police found the murderers. Two neighbours, 100 percent pure Italian breed. The couple killed the woman and the child mainly because of the noise the latter did. They had been used as source by many journalists, who reported how violent Mr Marzouk was.
Apart from the human tragedy, what happened proved once more that the professional association of journalist, the ODG, in Italy, is just a medieval corporation, unable to ask a minimum level of quality from its members. Journalists in Italy are obliged to become member of the ODG if they want to work under a legal full-time contract: no newspaper can employee a non member.
The ODG was created in 1925, two years after the fascist regime took effective power, in order for the regime to better control the press. After WWII, Luigi Einaudi, economist, anti-fascist activist, journalist and, incidentally, future President of the Italian republic, tried to get rid of the ODG. In Risorgimento Liberale[4], he wrote: “A journalist is someone who has something new to say; or who want to say, hopefully in a better way, something other people already said. The ODG is ridiculous. A professional association of poets could never exist, so cannot the ODG.” Sixty years later, the ODG is still there.
In 1963[5] the government put the ODG under the direct control of the Minister of Justice, until when a sentence of the Constitutional Court declared it was incompatible with the freedom of expression[6]. Nonetheless, the same sentence reinforced the ODG, affirming that the association itself was necessary to the country.
Beyond the inability to demand a decent level of quality from its members, the ODG shows another peculiar characteristic: the inability to defend its members when political power attacks the freedom of information. On the 18th April 2002, the Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi said during a press conference in Sofia that three journalists working for the RAI (the public Italian broadcasting company) used the firm in a criminal way. Among the three was Enzo Biagi, 82, one of the most esteemed, old (and moderate) Italian journalist. The three were immediately fired and no action was taken by the ODG, which proved once more its uselessness.
The coverage of the Erba massacre is not just a sample of bad journalism. Bad sources were surely used; journalist acted “like sharks”; they “played with people most intimate fears, as that always pays off.” But another problem emerged strongly: a modern democracy cannot afford an inefficient and mafia-like mandatory association for all the people who want to express their opinion — unless they are poet.
[1] Ordine dei Giornalisti Italiani, http://www.odg.it/www.odg.it_old/etica_03.htm. In Italian.
[2] Bette Davis in All about Eve, 1950, written and directed by Joseph Mankievicz.
[3] On the 29 July 2006 Romano Prodi’s government approved a mass pardon law (law 241/2006) in order to reduce the prison population. Among the Italian citizens who got advantage of the law there is Cesare Previti, former Defence Minister of Silvio Berlusconi. The law passed with a 83% approval.
[4] Luigi Einaudi, 12 November 1945, “Albi di giornalisti”, on Risorgimento Liberale. The full text can be found on: Luigi Einaudi, Scritti Economici, Storici e Civili, Mondadori Editore.
[5] Law 11, 3rd February 1963
[6] Sentence 11, 23rd March 1968
