On Monday 25 June Italia dei Valori organised the conference “The disappearance of Information”. Others who participated with myself were Oliviero Beha, Alessandro Casarin, Peter Gomez, Katharina Kort and Paolo Nizzola.
I’m publishing the video of my speech. In the next few days I will publish the speeches of other participants.

Text:
Thank you for your willingness to listen to this cry of alarm that Italia dei Valori has decided to launch in a panorama that is incredibly in agreement, in the current political system, in the current system of power, in the wish to criticise and gag information after having criticised and tried and to a certain extent successfully to gag the magistracy.
It’s a campaign for information and mobilisation that we have launched a month ago that we are taking to the cities to the neighbourhoods, to the markets, just because in the traditional means of communication this is hardly talked about. And when it is talked about, it is to stigmatise the behaviour of the press which is publishing the records and the intercepts either of the magistrate who has conducted an investigation or who has requested the intercept, however without giving due evidence to the content of the information item.
And this is what we have to talk about: the content that frequently is not pleasing to us politicians. And this is right. Whoever is a politician, or is anyway a public figure, is obviously and naturally undergoing public verification of their trustworthiness and their correct behaviour, exactly so that their work can be evaluated.
In reality we should thank the media because they allow us to make fewer mistakes and to correct our errors. I personally, more then once, have been the subject of news items that have remarked on my ways of behaving that are not good. After taking note of these, I have tried to alter my behaviour accordingly.
I believe that none of us can throw the first stone. We can’t really think that each of us is immune from committing errors.
The problem is that when this is pointed out to you, it’s useless to complain, you need to take note.
Take note and, for example, to watch out for the friends who you ask for a loan.
This is the correct behaviour and the humility with which you must face up to the relationship between information and the public office.
This is why I believe it is necessary that free information must remain such even when it hurts. It helps us to be better at serving the interests of all.
Italia dei Valori and myself, if we had to pass a law on the telephone intercepts that prevents their publication once the acts have been deposited, we will publish them on the website and on my blog, taking on the relevant responsibility, so as to resolve the problems for the journalists.
Where do we want to end up?
We want to guarantee the right of the citizens to be informed correctly so that they can judge and make choices. It is not true that it’s possible to publish only the acts that are criminally relevant: there’s a relevance that is not criminal but political, that is even more important.
It’s necessary that the citizens get to know certain information before they vote, not afterwards.
It’s of no use to know three years later of the behaviour of the Governor of the Bank of Italy. Similarly, it’s useless to say that it’s criminally irrelevant to know that Consorte receives for a 24 hour consultancy, 50 million euro.
It’s obvious that a consultancy like that does not cost 50 million euro: that is the cost of a document that justifies an operation that is not transparent, and it is good that citizens know about this operation.
On the law on the conflict of interests there’s already an agreement across the board to legitimise, no more no less, the current situation by photographing it.
Three amendments need inserting, otherwise we will vote against it. The true conflict of interests is today inside Parliament. That is the place with the greatest percentage of people with problems with the justice system. It can be resolved with a law with a single article: convicts cannot be candidates.
Period.
Second. You have to make a choice: you can be an entrepreneur, a journalist, photographer or what you will but if you are in the government you cannot have any other interest and above all you cannot have concessions or licences for public activities. Our forefathers understood that in 1957 when there was the cathode ray tube.
Third. blind trust. Italian blind trust, as Sartori says, is useless. If I decide who takes care of the interests of my activities, and I tell him at night what to do in the day. What’s needed is a complete separation between public office and private interests.
We need to get out of the Rai-Mediaset duopoly by liberalising the radio-TV frequencies and how they are allocated on a basis of equity. And we need to take action on the fair redistribution of advertising.
Finally, we have proposed two amendments that are fundamental to the law on
intercepts: secrecy must stop from the moment an act is available to the two sides; it must not be the weakest link, the journalist, who gets any financial penalty for the violation of the law.

There are so many free journalists. We have to organise things so that they are not heroes but normal citizens doing their job, keeping us informed.