Sicilian journalist cleared of harassing top government official
A Sicilian journalist has said he was just doing his job after magistrates dismissed harassment and stalking claims brought against him by a high-ranking regional government official over his reporting.
Accursio Sabella, the editor-in-chief of the online daily Live Sicilia, was accused by Patrizia Monterosso, the former general secretary of the Sicily region, of destabilising her “psychological equilibrium” because of the 241 articles he wrote over four years about her.
Monterosso was found guilty in February by the Italian court of audit of mismanaging public funds of more than €1m. She accused Sabella before the guilty verdict of causing her anxiety attacks with his articles on the way she was handling public funds and because he mentioned her name in his stories.
Magistrates in Palermo rejected the charges, which also included defamation, and dismissed Monterosso’s case against Sabella, finding on Thursday that the journalist has carried out his reporting properly.
“When my lawyer informed me that I had been accused of stalking and harassment, I thought it was a joke”, Sabella said. “I was only doing my job, denouncing irregularities in the regional government. And with her accusation, Monterosso has treated me on the same level as a deranged criminal who relentlessly pursues his victims, making their lives impossible.”
Monterosso’s accusations drew the ire of journalist associations, which have complained about the practice in Italy of lodging accusations of defamation or libel as a legal manoeuvre to deter or threaten journalists who often abandon their reporting while under investigation by the magistrates.
Sabella has received nearly 20 lawsuits for defamation during his career. The judges have dismissed the charges in each case.
According to statistics gathered by the Italian watchdog association Ossigeno per l’informazione, more than 5,000 lawsuits for defamation are filed against Italian journalists every year. Ninety per cent are eventually rejected as groundless.
The crime of aggravated defamation is punishable by six years in jail, second in Europe after Slovakia, with seven years.
“Lawsuits for defamation against journalists in Italy increase 8% each year”, said Alberto Spampinato, the director of Ossigeno per l’informazione. “We are facing the abusive practice of utilising legal action as an intimidatory instrument against reporters. A sort of gag to silence journalists, not to mention the legal expenses that reporters are forced to pay each time they become the target of a lawsuit.
“The situation is even worse for freelance reporters, who are grossly underpaid and often find themselves with legal expenses up to €5,000 for each lawsuit.”
Risks to journalists in Italy also come from the mafia. According to Ossigeno, 3,660 journalists have received threats since 2006, with 226 in the last year alone. Sicilian journalists have received 15% of these threats, to 34 reporters since January 2018. Twenty-one reporters in Italy are living under police protection.
The Italian interior ministry has begun to address these concerns, having recently instructed local authorities to monitor threats against reporters in their territories.
“This is a positive signal from the ministry, despite the fact that Rome has not always set a good example when it comes to defending journalists.”, said Giulio Francese, the president of the Italian journalists’ association in Sicily, whose father was killed by the mafia in 1979.
He was referring to an incident last November involving the deputy minister, Luigi Di Maio, who declared during a press conference that journalists were “negligible jackals” and “the true plague of this country”, accusing them of generating “fake news’’.
The mafia is not the only threat that Italian journalists face. Investigative journalists are often wiretapped, followed and intimidated by the authorities. Hundreds have been subjected to searches, confiscations and wiretaps by Italian prosecutors since 2006, according to Ossigeno.