During his frequent telephone rebukes, especially in his first term, we explained more than once to Luigi Brugnaro that we at ytali are not the opposition. We do nothing but our job in reporting on his activity as mayor, and that of his council. Nothing personal, nothing political. Just journalism.
As a non-profit newspaper, its gift is its freedom, its credibility. Its independence. Difficult concepts for a businessman? Then he stopped taking it personally, except at some public events, like on the machina of the Regata Storica a couple of years ago, after a gondolier’s clamorous protest against moto ondoso. I was the recipient of his wrath – “you… ” – as if ytali were the organizer of the protest. Then that was it, ytali was evidently a lost cause. But here we are in the blacklist of critics and opponents drawn up by his zealous collaborators, where ytali figures prominently, for articles written by Enzo Bon. This was just reported by Roberta De Rossi in Nuova di Venezia.
We are certain – at least as far as we are concerned – that this is entirely the work of his collaborators, and for this reason we confidently await a statement from the mayor that makes it clear that he was not involved. Without such a statement, the affair would take on much more serious political overtones. The management and editorial staff of ytali stands in solidarity with Enzo Bon, joining the numerous messages that our dear friend and collaborator has received.
[Guido Moltedo]
The condemnation note from the Veneto Journalists’ Association: (in translation)
Today’s press has revealed a file – among other things – of journalists guilty of having criticized or offended the mayor of Venice Luigi Brugnaro or the entire administration. According to what was reported this morning by La Nuova Venezia, the journalists from the program Report, the former head of the press office of Ca’ Farsetti Enzo Bon, and journalist Petra Reski are cited. “This is not the first time – recalls President Giuliano Gargano – that the Order has stigmatized this behavior: in recent years the Order has addressed several public position statements and letters to the municipal administration. The first article of the consolidated text of the duties of journalists establishes that “the freedom of information and criticism is an inalienable right of journalists, limited by compliance with the laws established to protect the personality of others and it is their inviolable obligation to respect the substantial truth of the facts, always observing the duties imposed by loyalty and good faith”. And the Constitution, in art. 21, establishes that “everyone has the right to freely express their thoughts with words, writing and any other means of diffusion”. On behalf of the Order of Journalists of Veneto, I express total solidarity with our colleagues who are involved and emphasize that journalists will not retreat one step from the duty to inform and criticize, which are the basic elements of our democracy”.
We were really surprised today. Even though he had already said it back in the now distant 2020: “Whoever creates specious controversies should know that they will be called out for what they have done. We have names and surnames; we have noted everything. Know that day by day we follow everything that is written“. This was Mayor Brugnaro, in the Covid era, who in a long Facebook Live broadcast harangued his fellow Venetian citizens with not so veiled threats against those who had the courage and will to criticize the municipal administration.
Today, however, we were surprised to see, thanks to the article published in Nuova Venezia by Roberta De Rossi, the list of the “bad guys” in black and white, seized from the municipal office of the mayor’s deputy chief of staff by investigators in the context of the “Palude” corruption investigation. That is, the list of those who dared to offend the majesty of the now naked king with their articles, posts, various writings, and uncomfortable positions.
The list includes journalists, including myself, writers, local politicians, or simply men and women who have had the “audacity” not to renounce their beliefs about the mayor and the administration he leads and to expose them by writing in newspapers, or on social media, or speaking in the city council.
We do not have the complete list of opponents, which I imagine will be quite substantial and full of well-known names; however, we do have information about the voracity of the owner of the Excel spreadsheet who, presumably during working hours, since the file was seized in offices owned by the Municipality, also enjoyed assigning a grade to the threats of lèse-majesté: from one to five, scale to represent the least to the greatest possible insult to the mayor, kindly leaving blank the amount to be requested as compensation in a possible civil suit.
I repeat to make it clearer: this is a file that was seized in a municipal office, presumably held by a municipal employee who was therefore paid by all of us and made use of technologies owned by the Administration, i.e. computers, internet connection, computer media, etc. All in order, right? It would be laughable, if it were not instead a piece of news that alarms me immensely and reminds me how Article 21 of our Constitutional Charter is constantly forgotten. I want to recall it here too:
Everyone has the right to freely express their thoughts with words, writing and any other means of diffusion. The press cannot be subjected to authorization or censorship
This is what our founding fathers wrote, who had direct experience of the dark years, where freedom tout-court, not only that of the press, had been set aside in the face of a dominant and totalitarian idea.
Now, I certainly do not want to compare this story of the list of the mayor’s opponents to the liberticidal drama experienced during the fascist ventennio; however, we must pay due attention to it, because freedom is not an eternal and immutable condition and can be eroded, piece by piece, even by this tragicomic story. The tale itself is an epiphany, revealing a man accustomed to command without any interference; who gets sincerely angry if someone criticizes him, be it a journalist or a city councilor or a citizen; who would also do without, if he could, the Executive, the City Council and all the various trappings of democracy that slow down his work.
Because it is precisely these attitudes against which we must constantly remain vigilant: we must not grow accustomed to the man in sole command; we must reject the fascination of the narrative of the “man of providence“, who has arrived in the right place at the right time, perhaps to balance the books.
We do not want to end up like, to quote Noam Chomsky, the frog who got so used to feeling the water in the pot on the stove, in which he was bathing, go from cold to lukewarm and then hot and then hotter and hotter, that in the end he ended up unwittingly being boiled.
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