How to free journalism from marketettes?
Present and future of journalism. With some personal and dispassionate advice. The letter from Teo Dalavecuras
Dear director,
in the Sunday issue of Startmag I find four articles that annoy some of your colleagues or some media outlets.
Giuseppe Liturri's notes in the margin of Federico Fubini's editorial are punctual and sacrosanct but I fear that at Corriere they will dismiss them at best with a shrug of the shoulders. The same – with reference to the targets of the controversy case by case whether explicitly identified or not – can be said of Giuliano Cazzola's focused and entertaining italics on the Scurati and Barbano cases and also of the " scratch" not without the indispensable touch of venom by Francesco Damato, dedicated to the Press . But it is on the fourth contribution that I would like to talk to you for a moment.
The article taken from the Charlie newsletter mocks, with inimitable class, the management of Repubblica for the tribute of space and "signatures" with which it celebrates the glory of Giorgio Armani . We Milanese are also proud of "Giorgio", not only for the contribution he has given and continues to give to the well-being of Ambrosia but also for his past as a window dresser at La Rinascente , who became a world fashion star in the broadest sense of the term, in short the version extreme of the myth of “the self-made”; Repubblica , which although not Milanese, is even more proud of it due to the natural affection that binds the media to their main advertisers. However, the above consideration also applies to Charlie : in the editorial office of La Repubblica they will have had a laugh, despite the inconveniences and protests of the trade union bodies and your more sensitive colleagues.
The problem is that on the shameless mixture of contents and advertising (in the broadest sense including marketing/promotion/events initiatives) to which the main Italian newspapers are dedicated in terms of circulation, Charlie has been returning almost every week since time immemorial, but not it seems that perseverance leaves some trace. With marginal exceptions, there is no news of proceedings by the Guarantor Authority contesting conduct of "hidden advertising" nor of controversies among the many who say they have the future of journalism at heart. It is not worth talking about other more or less "responsible" authorities.
Allow me then to take it a little distantly, also because advertising disguised as a newspaper article is only one aspect of an ancient history, today exasperated by the desperate conditions faced by daily and periodical, printed and virtual paper.
More than forty years ago, in the much applauded inaugural speech of his mandate as president of Consob in a lecture hall crowded like never before at Bocconi, Guido Rossi, after having praised the Anglo-Saxon legislation based on the concept of disclosure, had wanted point out that all the transparency that he had managed to impose on the securities markets with the Commission's regulatory instruments would have been of little use if the media world had not played its part as a "watchdog" of ordinary citizens who do not have privileged access to information.
The journalists were seduced and Rossi became a star of the economic-financial press and not only that, with the title of "Mr. Transparency", but the guard dogs continued to bark little and in any case without baring their teeth, so we continue to ignore whether are equipped with them.
It will be said that many media outlets now only have eyes left to cry and therefore there is no need to rage, and I will not stand here and say that the category fully deserved this end, because the problem remains. But something could be done and the modest proposal for which I am writing to you is the following. 1. Abolish the professional association, whose role is increasingly evanescent when even the social security treatment of the category has long been managed by the INPS, while the ethical role is entrusted to phantom local bodies. 2. Abolish the medieval figure of the "responsible" director: the director is the director, period. The competent judge establishes the responsibilities on a case-by-case basis. If we really don't want to do without a figure who is responsible "by definition" for any journalistic misdeeds, this role could only fall to a figure who represents the company , and certainly not to those who represent the editorial team. The sanction for those who carry out journalistic work must be individual disgrace, not the judicial officer: if they carry out journalistic work, of course.
Of course, it won't help turn newspapers into gold mines. But, if nothing else, in this way, the media caravanserai will get rid of the residues of pseudo sacredness "from art. 21", the directors will have one less excuse to lie down in front of their publisher and above all of their publisher's financier and – let me dream – in the editorial offices, made up of good people no longer protected by bureaucratic barriers to entry, perhaps it will begin to circulate the crisp air of free initiative.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/come-liberare-il-giornalismo-dalle-markette/ on Mon, 17 Jun 2024 13:43:04 +0000.