ROME: Italy’s media and traditional political parties were up in arms Wednesday after the head of the populist Five Star movement accused the country’s journalists of “manufacturing false news.”
Comic Beppe Grillo, founder of the anti-euro movement, lashed out at print and TV journalists, accusing them of fabricating news to keep the Five Stars down.
“Newspapers and television news programs are the biggest manufacturers of false news in the country, with the aim of ensuring those who have power keep it,” he said on his blog on Tuesday.
He called for “a popular jury to determine the veracity of the news published,” and said in cases of fake news “the editor must, head bowed, make a public apology and publish the correct version at the start of the program or on the paper’s front page.”
Grillo said members of the general public “picked at random” would be shown newspaper articles and programs and asked “to determine their accuracy.”
The blog was accompanied by a montage of the banners and logos of Italy’s main newspapers and television news programs.
The media world was enraged. The news director of the private TG La7 channel, Enrico Mentana, said he would sue the comedian, while journalists’ union FNSI slammed the “lynching of all journalists.”
The opposition Five Stars was running neck-and-neck with the ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD) before Matteo Renzi’s downfall last month and is campaigning hard for the next general election, which could be held in coming months.
What Grillo is proposing “is called Fascism, and those who play it down are accomplices,” PD senator Stefano Esposito said.
The center-right Forza Italia (FI) party, founded by ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, said Grillo wanted a “minculpop 2.0,” a reference to the propaganda and censorship ministry under dictator Benito Mussolini.
Grillo has had a difficult relationship with the media since launching the Five Stars (M5S) in 2009, banning members from appearing on talk shows and giving international media priority over their Italian counterparts at his rallies.
His claim that journalists were to blame for the country’s poor standing on the World Press Freedom Index — where it ranks 77th — was dismissed Wednesday by the editor in chief of the Repubblica daily.
Comic Beppe Grillo, founder of the anti-euro movement, lashed out at print and TV journalists, accusing them of fabricating news to keep the Five Stars down.
“Newspapers and television news programs are the biggest manufacturers of false news in the country, with the aim of ensuring those who have power keep it,” he said on his blog on Tuesday.
He called for “a popular jury to determine the veracity of the news published,” and said in cases of fake news “the editor must, head bowed, make a public apology and publish the correct version at the start of the program or on the paper’s front page.”
Grillo said members of the general public “picked at random” would be shown newspaper articles and programs and asked “to determine their accuracy.”
The blog was accompanied by a montage of the banners and logos of Italy’s main newspapers and television news programs.
The media world was enraged. The news director of the private TG La7 channel, Enrico Mentana, said he would sue the comedian, while journalists’ union FNSI slammed the “lynching of all journalists.”
The opposition Five Stars was running neck-and-neck with the ruling center-left Democratic Party (PD) before Matteo Renzi’s downfall last month and is campaigning hard for the next general election, which could be held in coming months.
What Grillo is proposing “is called Fascism, and those who play it down are accomplices,” PD senator Stefano Esposito said.
The center-right Forza Italia (FI) party, founded by ex-prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, said Grillo wanted a “minculpop 2.0,” a reference to the propaganda and censorship ministry under dictator Benito Mussolini.
Grillo has had a difficult relationship with the media since launching the Five Stars (M5S) in 2009, banning members from appearing on talk shows and giving international media priority over their Italian counterparts at his rallies.
His claim that journalists were to blame for the country’s poor standing on the World Press Freedom Index — where it ranks 77th — was dismissed Wednesday by the editor in chief of the Repubblica daily.
