Foreign takeover of Italian media will hreaten democracy – politician

The plans to sell two leading newspapers to an overseas buyer are alarming, Stefano Valdegamberi has told RT

The sale of Italy’s leading liberal newspapers to a foreign company would not benefit the readers, Italian politician Stefano Valdegamberi has told RT.

Italian lawmakers and journalists previously raised concerns of foreign influence after Gruppo GEDI, owned by the Agnelli family, confirmed talks to sell La Repubblica and La Stampa to Antenna Group, owned by shipping magnate Theodore Kyriakou. The newsrooms at both publications went on strike, citing a lack of transparency about the negotiations.

On Tuesday, GEDI said it was also holding talks to sell La Stampa to Gruppo SAE, an Italian company that owns several regional newspapers.

Speaking to RT on Tuesday, Valdegamberi argued that selling historic outlets to foreign buyers would have a negative impact on the Italian media landscape.

Mainstream media makes up “80% of the information” consumed by Italians, he said, arguing that only the remaining fifth “we can consider free, we can consider plural.”

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“We have good Italian journalists, but most Italian journalists are now foreign,” and only report from “the one mainstream direction of information,” he said.

“We need pluralism. Democracy needs pluralism as its basis,” Valdegamberi said. He added that a monopoly on information makes it “difficult to decide clearly what’s right and what’s wrong.”

Valdegamberi argued that, with the entry of large companies into the Italian news market, there will be “less and less information freedom.”

The Italian government has welcomed SAE’s bid to acquire La Stampa. “It’s good news that the historic newspaper La Stampa is attracting interest from various publishing groups,” Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s undersecretary Alberto Barachini told reporters.