Ischia: journalism still kills.
The relationship between journalism and governance is always stated in a chaotic and very qualitative way, as if there were no underlying physics, and therefore journalism is portrayed as an isolated system that is at best lateral to the system of governance, but not really accountable.
This is true in a regime, but in a democratic system there is the problem of forming opinions. When voting, the citizen expresses a preference, which is also an opinion, or expresses the finished product of journalism and information.
When you vote, don't vote, I don't know, FdI. Vote "what I know about FdI". But what you know about FdI, unless you're in Meloni's bed, is what national information has told you, or (in the case of Italy, by law), journalism.
Someone could object that the electoral campaign takes place in squares and in different places, today also social networks, forgetting that the squares are then shown on TV, and that most of the time articles in the various newspapers are commented on social media.
But what does this mean?
It means, very systematically, that every quality or defect of a democratic system mirrors the same quality or defect of journalism.
Let's take a simple example: you may have heard of a "water bomb". The "water bomb" is a sudden and abundant rain, which was once called "it rains a lot", which has no scientific justification (most meteorologists are against this definition: https://meteobook.it/bomba -dacqua-il-fenomeno-meteo-che-non-exist/ ) and which appears in the newspapers for a specific purpose: to cover the responsibilities of the government and administrations.
When a government likes it, and the rain devastates everything, as the government's response is sloppy and tardy, journalists speak of a "water bomb". In this case they raise the friendly administration from the judgment towards an at least sloppy hydrogeological and urban planning policy.
When the government is hostile, however, what do you do? The water bomb disappears, and…
“Every rain”: it's not a “water bomb” anymore, you understand? It could have been prevented. It is no longer an “apocalypse 4020”. Something could have been done.
This way of exposing the news obviously forms the opinion (one should say: the prejudice) of the voters, who then vote for governments that exactly reflect, in everything and in everything, the distorted filter of journalism.
A tragedy daughter of abusiveness, arrogance and indifference is, inevitably, the INTEGRAL responsibility of an abusive, arrogant and indifferent journalism.
The mirror of the Italian problems, as in EVERY democracy, therefore coincides perfectly with the mirror of the problems of journalism. Grillo had understood this, and it was not for nothing that he railed against journalists, without understanding that in any case he did not enter every house, and therefore the mass media mediated him too.
Another example is what happened with gas. The press has, for years, published incredible praise for every company that goes green. Pippo SpA changes the irrigation system for the plants in the reception area! Big page! Pluto SpA changes the feeding system of the coffee machines. Big page!
By dint of big pages, the population was almost convinced that they were one step away from conquering the "green". Only electric cars were missing (which move the problem but don't solve it) and yes, some plants to close here and there.
This was the imaginative world that the press had sold, and clearly there was bewilderment when the war came and it was discovered that entire nations do not live, but not even for the minimum services, without gas. Whether it's Russian gas or it can be found in Algeria and Tunisia (known democracies), or in Qatar or Saudi Arabia (all democracies, as it is known), in the end we are completely dependent on fossil fuels.
And not just “the evil Germans who make North Stream”. All of Europe. And Spain seems immune not because it doesn't use gas, but because it has diversified its sources. That's all?
We abruptly emerged from a dream in which we were gloriously on the way to having a green economy by 2030, when we suddenly realized that, in addition to the page spread in the newspapers, we hadn't moved even a small step.
And this obviously appealed to the electorate, who goes to vote thinking that, in the end, the problem of energy policy has been resolved. Just as today you think that a Piombino regasification terminal, which does not yet exist, brings gas to Italy, and we are completely ignoring the fact that, instead of focusing on renewables, all we are doing is simply… looking for gas elsewhere. And no newspaper is wondering why.
The problem then, and this is where the journalist's crime comes in, is not the entire economy that depends on gas, but bills. As if a poor country full of unemployed could pay the bill, if we just cut it by 30%. If you are unemployed, you have zero money.
But the Italian voter went to vote thinking about the bill problem, and not the energy problem: the result is a government that is doing nothing for energy, but first of all it is making a budget to mitigate bills. Brilliant, but in six months you will also pay the arrears.
But the plants in the reception are watered with recycled water. Yay!
And in reality, even systematic corruption mirrors that of the world of journalism, where a career is made in all the ways that cannot be pronounced in front of the ladies.
When people die in a landslide, journalism hasn't just killed because it has coined justification terms for the weather. His faults are many: if someone had proposed to tear down those abusive houses, processions and protests would have been made with lots of photos of appadrepio, and guess who would have gone there to film the demonstration? It depends on the government: if it was government A, the newspapers would have gone in favor of B, and vice versa.
Never that there is an embargo against the unjust: in Italian journalism, there is no criminal or honest, just or unjust: there are "the one from my faction" and "the one from the other faction".
And this is also what KILLS: the unjust knows that he will find at least one side, and knows well that journalism will then give him political power.
Because when we say that democracy rests on information, we are saying that anyone who ends up in the newspapers becomes a legitimate political faction . And in journalism no one bothers to prevent the worst from becoming a legitimate political faction.
A journalism in which those who build illegally cannot be distinguished from the common sense of not building in the bed of streams, inventing the "illegal abuse" (which is like saying "the rape of arousal"), to the point of allowing illegality to become a topic political, is what produced in the voters the idea that this was tolerable and voteable:
For such a manifesto to make sense, a journalism that considers "amnesty for Campania" an argument worthy of becoming a political position is needed.
We need a journalism that makes sure, in political debates, to present this opinion as one of many.
And then, if you want to ask yourself whose fault it is, you'll end up saying that it's politics that doesn't stop illegal activity.
But whose fault is it if politics doesn't stop illegal activity?
Of the voters who vote for people like that.
And whose fault is it that the voter votes for people like that?
Here they are:
