“It should always be remembered that journalists find themselves exercising a function of a constitutional nature that is linked to Article 21 of the Fundamental Charter, with a decisive democratic role. There have been, in recent times, increasing protests, intimidation, when not aggression, against journalists, who find themselves documenting facts. But information is exactly that. As also in Turin in recent days”. These are the words of President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, meeting the press at the traditional Ceremony of the Fanat the Quirinale, recalling the recent attack by militants of Casapound (an extreme right-wing and neo-fascist political movement) on a journalist, and remarking, “To quote Tocqueville once again, 'democracy is the power of an informed people. That is why any act directed against free information, any reduction of it to fake news, is a subversive act directed against the Republic”. “A guarantee of democracy is, of course, pluralism of information. To this value the institutions of the Republic must direct the utmost attention and support,” the Head of State further emphasizes, who on this issue denounces how the over the top appear ”distant from the common feeling, from the relations of belonging to the community within which they operate, almost as if they occupied a meta-territorial space that makes them means of innovation, capable of intercepting economic opportunities, without however considering that the principles of civil coexistence proper to States and the international community from which they benefit also apply to them”.
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