The control of information is the key point for guaranteeing continuity of all dictatorships, even the gentle ones, like our own. It is the tool, when appropriately manoevred, that allows for the manipulation of the consciences and the opinions of a nation. The political class knows this very well and it knows the mechanisms to guarantee control.

It’s not a coincidence that the four-time- President of the Council Silvio Berlusconi is the owner of three TV networks of which one, Rete4 is abusively occupying frequencies. It’s not a coincidence that Silvio Berlusconi comes out with “the publisher Ciarrapico has important newspapers that are not hostile to us and it is absolutely important that these newspapers continue to be so” when Giuseppe Ciarrapico, definitively convicted for receiving and fraudulent bankruptcy, wants to be a candidate to the Senate.

It’s not a coincidence that the political parties influence the main news publications by means of assigning public funds to the party and non-party publishers. It’s not a coincidence that with each new legislature we see the painful farce of assigning the armchairs for who is to control the State TV. In exchange, to keep the balance, newspapers and TV have to guarantee that the front pages of the newspapers and the national news broadcasts give maximum space to talking about opinions, soft declarations, “head-and-shoulders”, family gossip, holiday retreats and preferred reading of the VIPs of politics.

If a citizen were to settle on these considerations they would have to resign themselves to living “in a coma of conscience”. Luckily that doesn’t happen. Something is changing. We can see that by surfing the internet, or reading the odd article that escaped the controls of the editors, or by watching some “rebel” broadcast that’s useful to the audience ratings (on which normally legal proceedings for defamation shower down and sharp words from the editors on the following day).

Today, while reading the comments to the article “Justice: Attracting the birds to entrap them”, I noticed that of Paolo Papillo. Paolo says he is a “precarious” lorry driver and in his spare time he participates in the political life of this country with his PC and his mobile phones. His is a small contribution but it is an expression of the freedom of information, done by citizens who are not resigned. Paolo is a citizen who wants and hopes that things can change as the Internet keeps his conscience awake.


I’m publishing Paolo Papillo’s comment:

“And the holidays are over for those who had holidays. I who am a “precarious” lorry driver don’t know what it is to have paid holidays. I start again with my battle against false information, because a people that doesn’t know is a people that doesn’t get angry.
I am one person and I can’t do a lot. I am a lorry driver and I set off in the night between Sunday and Monday and I come back home on Friday night. The weekend I dedicate to my family and to resting and sometimes even to politics. To be honest, it annoys me that I cannot do more, especially for this dramatic moment for our country. A country that I see drifting away in the hands of a clique of business people and inhabited by a population made up mostly of “I-don’t-care-people”. So what have I invented to try to get my dissenting voice heard? With a laptop and 4 mobile phones, in the hours when I have to stay still with my lorry, I send out emails and I do phone calls to the radio and TV broadcasts that give us the chance to go live. And I “shout out” all my anger and outrage. What I do is not much but it is still better than nothing. Just think if there were thousands of us doing the same thing. Now the holidays are over I will go back to my battle against false information, hoping that someone will support me. Staying just on the blog is like “canatarsela e suonarsela” alone. It’s for those who don’t visit the Internet that we have to explain and get them to understand what we are moving towards.”