23 April 2010

The infamous "Il Giornale"

The Berlusconi family’s propagandist daily newspaper, "Il Giornale", has been found guilty on no less than three occasions in recent days following charges I laid against them for defamation (read the article regarding my three complaints). Three articles devoid of any foundation – in which journalism took a back seat and was superseded by the running down of an adversary – which left me no other choice but to resort to legal action. Now the justice system has clearly impeached the journalists in question and sentenced the newspaper’s publishers to compensate me to the tune of around 350-thousand Euro for the slanderous lies they printed. This is not the first time that the Premier’s publications have been ordered to compensate yours truly and I honestly believe that it won’t be the last time.

Here is the text of an interview that I granted this afternoon, at the Feltrinelli bookshop in Piazza Piemonte in Milan, where I was busy unveiling my latest book, entitled "Ad ogni costo" (“At all costs”).

From way back when I worked as a magistrate, to now that I am a Deputy for the Italia dei Valori party, “Il Giornale” has had to pay me hundreds of thousands of Euro in compensation.
However, the main issue here is not actually the large amounts of money they have paid out in compensation, which they view as an investment, but the attention should rather be focussed on the serious damage they have wrought on the information system in general, because they are no longer printing critical news, preferring to either spread disinformation on events that never took place and then passing them off as if they had, or ignoring events that did in fact take place.
Furthermore, they always do this at election time, with the aim of de-legitimising the opposing political forces.
This goes far beyond news journalism. Indeed it destroys journalism by resorting to defamation. It leaves me no other choice but to resort to taking legal action, not so much in order to get compensation for damages, but rather to obtain a ruling that re-establishes the truth.
This legal action now also includes a number of similar cases that we are currently busy putting together as a result of the latest acts of slander concerning my alleged personal involvement in matters involving priests and various other matters.

Posted by Antonio Di Pietro in Information