Free information is the basis of democracy. Without that every democratic mechanism ceases to exist.
The mixing up of politics and media in Italy is so abnormal that it is the determinant in the election of a President of the Council and in influencing public opinion every day with false news and biased comments to such an extent that it is insolent.
This connection must be cut in a radical way. Politicians must in no way be owners of newspapers or of TV channels. The Government must, on this point, act decisively and quickly to eliminate this anomaly in Italian democracy, even by issuing a decree.
We can’t allow ourselves to face new elections with the information system maimed by Berlusconi’s TV channels.
Together with this will to control information for some time now there have been signs of the will to attack the free journalism that is still present in Italy.
I want to be very clear: politicians must not interfere against the publication of articles relating to them with libel actions that intimidate and with threats against the magistrates. Let them do politics, dedicate themselves to making laws, to the political programme, and stop buying banks for the party or getting interests in publishing companies. That way, no intercept will be an embarrassment to them.
Politics needs transparency. You can’t expect to do this in the shadows, with strategies that are not known to the electors.
This is not the “political intelligence” that interests the Italians. Politicians must remember that they are only responsible to the country, to the citizens who pay their salaries.
The arrogance and the impunity of a political class that has been defined, too benevolently, as a caste, has reached such a point as to wish to prevent access to a journalist of a publication considered “not a friend” to a State aircraft, as though it were the private property of a Minister and not “a public good”.
A political class without discretion and that is absolutely bipartisan in attacking the judges, who have only respected the law by making public the records of Ricucci two years later, and the journalists who are exercising the duty of recording the news.
Italia dei Valori has created a long-lasting campaign to “liberalise” the semi-free information of our country. It will do this with draft laws, meetings in the cities of Italy with the citizens, with seminars.
In the Senate there will shortly be voting on the intercept law. My party is committed to prevent it becoming a gag imposed on journalists. And if a liberty-killing law should get through, Italia dei Valori will publish in my blog the texts that are forbidden to the journalists and anyone will be able to copy them and pass them on while citing the source.
Free information allows citizens to evaluate, to judge the actions of the government and the opposition. It is an indispensable instrument for the development of democracy and for good government. In the sights of politics today there are free journalists, who fortunately still exist, and the magistrates.
Instead of self-criticism there’s an attempt to attack those who point out anomalous and unjustifiable behaviour. Instead of looking at the moon, they are looking at the finger pointing to it.

Read more on the initiative: "La vera informazione garantisce la democrazia".