The government, in the Senate Justice Committee, requested the postponement of the examination of the defamation bill. After the controversy of recent days over the amendments presented by the rapporteur Gianni Berrino (FDI) which provided for prison terms of up to 4 and a half years and which were then withdrawn, the president of the Commission, Giulia Bongiorno, had called a majority meeting to take stock . And it seemed an agreement had been reached by focusing everything on "title and rectification", but without foreseeing detention. The government, however, today asked to postpone because "further investigations are needed".
Gasparri: 'We need a solution for effective grinding'
"No one intends to touch Article 21 of the Constitution. The real issue, and I say this not only as a parliamentarian but also as a professional journalist for almost 40 years, is the effectiveness of rectifications and the restoration of reputation. In the laws it is written that corrections and denials must be published with the same evidence. In reality this never happens, we are full of columns of letters that deny in eight fonts, in the corner of a page, headlines in nine columns on the front page that have affected people who. then, over time, they proved to be extraneous to the narratives made.
We are full of television programs that finally read the denial letter received. This is the issue." This was said by the president of Forza Italia senators Maurizio Gasparri speaking in the Justice Commission regarding the defamation bill for which the government has requested a postponement of the examination. "The only journalist who risked It was Sallusti who went to prison and the affair was so sensational that it ended with the President of the Republic pardoning him - he continued - no one wants to put handcuffs on anyone and the only real case that occurred ended with a discussion at the highest levels of the Repubblica precisely because of the outcry over the possibility of a journalist going to prison, even if not everyone rose up in Sallusti's case because there are limited-range insurrections on freedom and on Article 21".
"The real point is the effectiveness of restoring the reputation of damaged people. If there is a nine-column title, you have to make a nine-column rectification, otherwise you have to pay heavy fines, not go to prison. We don't want to coerce no one's will, but neither can one have the availability of other people's reputations with impunity", he concluded.