This content was published on June 20, 2021 – 09:26
Rome, Jun 20 (EFE) .- The decision of the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) of Lazio to order journalists from an Italian public television program, Rai, to reveal their sources, equating them with public officials, has put on their feet war against the country’s press associations, which consider it a “very serious” precedent and call for the intervention of the Government and Parliament.
The RAI announced this Saturday that it will appeal to the State Council the sentence, which partially agrees with a lawyer cited in a journalistic investigation of the Report program on the alleged corruption in the concession of public contracts in Lombardy (north), according to media local.
“The Army will have to come for the documents related to our sources, we will never deliver them, we will protect them until death,” said Report presenter Siegfried Ranucci, supported by the management of Rai3, the channel on which the Program.
This is “a very serious precedent, an attack on the independence and autonomy of information,” said the management, before adding that “the company will do everything possible to guarantee its journalists the full exercise of freedom of information and freedom of information. protection of sources “.
The ruling will allow the lawyer, Andrea Mascetti, to obtain part of the documents, those transmitted by the program to the Administration, which “equates Rai journalists to public officials, thus reducing the right and duty of public service journalists to protect sources as provided by professional secrecy “, explained the secretary of the Union of Journalists of the Rai (Usigrai), Vittorio Di Trapani.
“In practice, this means eliminating for Rai journalists the possibility of doing investigative journalism, a pillar of the service contract,” he added.
The National Press Federation (Fnsi) and the Usigrai jointly demanded from the Government and Parliament “the need for an urgent clarification on the legal nature of the Rai” because its journalists “cannot be compared with civil service officials. “.
“Therefore, the rules on access to documents must succumb to the journalist’s right / duty to protect his sources. Otherwise, any possibility for the Rai journalists to do their job would be effectively nullified, and even more so. , to do investigative journalism, as well as to comply with the obligations of the Service Contract, “they added. EFE
© EFE 2021. The redistribution and redistribution of all or part of the contents of Efe’s services is expressly prohibited, without the prior and express consent of the EFE SA Agency.
–
